Cook sister!

Waiter, there's something in my... spiced pumpkin muffins

I have a confession to make.

Most days of the year, I am a diligent blogger who tries to buy ethically-produced products.  I try to patronise independent retailers where I can, rather than the huge chains that have assumed far too much power over what we put on our plates.  I gravitate towards excellent, natural ingredients and shun E-numbers.

But for a couple of days a year, specifically the couple of days that I have been lucky enough to spend in the USA in 2005, 2006 and 2008, I seem to have a momentary lapse of reason.  It started as a casual experiment in 2005 - one of those "oh, I've never seen that back home, let's try it" moments that you have while traveling.  And now I realise that it has become my dirty little secret when I come to the USA.

I really, really, really like Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes.

Oh, I KNOW Starbucks is a symbol par excellence of the bland international corporate behemoths that have robbed us of independent outlets. And I know that the mug is probably full of not-at-all natural ingredients to give it that addictive flavour.  And yes, I do feel a little guilty as I furtively sidle up to the barista to place my order ("whipped cream with that?  From a can?  YOU BET!").

But everyone's gotta have a dirty little secret, and this is mine.

The one good thing that has come of my clandestine addiction is that it introduced me to the concept of pumpkin pie spices. I didn't really grow up with pumpkin pie and used to imagine it as a savoury pie, so you can imagine how my culinary eyes were opened when I discovered that it is sweet!  Pumpkin pie spice traditionally consists of a blend of all or some of the following ground spices:  cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice and mace.  These are wonderfully warming spices and ideal for this time of year - and it is these spices that give the muffins their gently spiced flavour.  Apart from being delicious, these are also a great way to use up leftover cooked pumpkin or butternut squash.  The texture is fluffy and moist, and they are best straight out of the oven.  

Just be careful - they may become YOUR secret addiction! 

 

SPICED PUMPKIN MUFFINS (makes 12 regular or 6 large)
(Recipe from the November 2008 Gourmet Magazine)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup of golden raisins or sultanas
2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
113g butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)
3/4 cup pure pumpkin puree (I used butternut squash puree)
1/4 cup buttermilk, shaken
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla etract
3 tbsp hulled green pumpkin seeds (pepitas) (I used more)

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 200C and butter muffin tin if necessary.  Soak the raisins in hot water for 5 mins, then drain and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt in a large bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the butter, brwn sugar, pumpkin puree, buttermilk, eggs and vanilla.  Add the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Then stir in the raisins and 2 Tbsp of the pumpkin seeds.

Divide the batter among the muffin cups and sprinkle with the remaining seeds (I added some extra as I love pumpkin seeds!).  Bake in the middle of the oven until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Allow to cool on a rack until muffins come out of their cups easily.

This post is my entry into this motn's edition of Waiter, There's Something in My... which I am hosting.  The theme is gourds and I've extended the deadline to Sunday 2 November to give you the weekend to get your entries in!

Roasted corn with lime & chilli butter

 

You know how sometimes you visit a place and it's totally different to what you expected?  And then other times you visit a place and it is 100% exactly as you expected it to be, just like you have seen in the movies and your imagination a dozen times.

The latter is true of the American Midwest.  Drive out of the cities and soon you are surrounded by red wooden barns and the amber waves of corn that stretch from sea to shining sea, as described in America the Beautiful.  It's mesmerisingly lovely and reminded me that I have yet to post the delicious roasted corn that I made for lunch about six weeks ago.  I had seen a couple of recipes for roasted corn here and there on the blogs and when I popped into Borough market and saw these gorgeous fresh ears of corn still nestled in their leaves and silks, I was powerless to resist.

As a kid, we'd often have corn (or mealies, as they are known in South Africa).  I used to love eating it straight off the cob, with those little 2-prong forks poked in either end to hold it without burning your hands.  But at some point I decided that this was just tooooo messy and developed the habit of standing the cob upright and slicing the kernels off with a sharp knife, before buttering and eating them.  Tasty - yes.  But somehow lackign in the magic of eating it with your hands.

So when I started seeing recipes pop up all over the web for roasted corn, I decided to give it a go and relive my childhood... albeit with the more grown-up flavours of chilli and lime!  The recipe comes from one of my favourite discoveries of the past year, Dragon's Kitchen

 

ROASTED CORN WITH A LIME & CHILLI BUTTER

Ingredients:

4 ears of corn still in their husks
1/4 cup butter, softened
zest of one lime
juice of half a lime
1/4 teaspoon dried hot pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon chili powder (I used Lawry's red pepper seasoned salt with Tabasco instead)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C.  Place the corn, husks and all, on a baking sheet in the centre of the oven. Cook for 35-40 minutes.

While the corn is roasting, make the chilli butter. Combine the rest of the ingredients and mix until well blended.  Refrigerate the softened butter mixture until the corn is roasted.

Carefully (they are HOT!) remove the husks and silk off the corn and serve immediately with the butter. Feel like a kid again!

Other bloggers roasting or grilling their corn:

Anne made fire-roasted corn salsa with feta cheese

Elise made a grilled corn salad 

Susan made elote or Mexican grilled corn

Eating Club Vancouver made grilled corn

Saturday Snapshots #9

 

London Autumn stroll, October 2007

Apparently the depth of red or yellow colour that Autumn leaves attain is determined by how much sustained warmth the tree enjoyed during the summer.  Clearly, last year was an unspectacular but sustained, warm summer.  Clearly this year was not - this same avenue of trees near my house that was ablaze with colour last Autumn is a kind of mottled combination of green and already-dead brown leaves this year.

This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister. Click here for a full list of photographs previously featured.  If you like this or any other photo featured in Saturday Snapshots, why not buy it as a greeting card or print in my RedBubble store?

Some press, some awards, and a great reason to bake some bread

Remember that line in Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman as Mia comes back to the table at Jack Rabbit Slims where she is having dinner with with John Travlota as Vincent and she says "Don't you just love it when you come back from the bathroom and find your food waiting for you?"? 

Well, that's rather how I felt when I got back from holiday this week.

Firstly, I was thrilled to find out this week that Justin Hartman over at the Afrigator blog (Afrigator being a blog aggregator for African blogs) has compiled a list of the top 45 female African bloggers (as ranked by Afrigator) - and I'm on it!  I come in at number 8 which is pretty thrilling.  Do yourself a favour and go and take a look at some of the other blogs on the list.  Some will be familiar, but I guarantee you that you will find some new female bloggers to add to your blogroll.  Thanks for the great spotlight, Justin! 

In a bit of nationality dissonance, I am also happy to announce that CookSister has been named as one of the top 10 British food blogs of the moment by All About You (the online home of Good Housekeeping magazine).  I'm in good company too as Andrew, Johanna, Trig, Keiko Julia and Scott all feature too!

And I was touched to discover that I had been nominated for an award, not by one but by two of my favourite foodies over in the Food24 stable. Both Naqiyah of Tongue Tickle and Browniegirl of Kitchen Diary had nominated me for an "I  love your blog" award in my absence - thanks ladies!  And of course, the feeling is mutual :)

Here are the rules:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog.
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you (as shown above).
3) Nominate at least seven other blogs.
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog.

In no particular order, I nominate:

Charlotte of Charlotte's Web
Mel of Doula Mel
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Kit of Food & Family
Ronell of My French Kitchen
Katie of Thyme for Cooking
Girlie and Pants of Boots in the Oven

And just before we move on from awards, the winners have been announced in the 2008 Bloggers' Choice awards and now we are straight into another year's voting for the 2009 awards.  I have been nominated in the Best Food Blog and Best Writing (bizarrely named the Blogitzer) category.  Please click on these links to vote for me!  You will have to create a username and password to prevent duplicate voting, but this will not take more than a few seconds. Thank you!

The one thing that I was sorry to miss while I was away was Blog Action Day on 15 October.  This is a designated day when bloggers worldwide all post on a single topic in an effort to make a difference and change the world in a positive way.  This year, the theme was poverty and there were some outstanding posts, like Deeba's haunting photographs of New Delhi and Charlotte's devastating piece on how poverty and HIV are in a deadly partnership in South Africa.  However, an initiative that I can take part in is the worldwide Blogger Bake-off, which was launched by Breadline Africa on Blog Action Day.  The slogan is bake bread, give dough and the aim is to raise $1 million in funds to help alleviate poverty in Africa.  Their plan is to convert shipping containers into locations for food production and distribution in Africa.  It is hoped that these sustainable commnity kitchens will not only provide food such as bread and soup to those in need, but also opportunities for skills development within poor communities.

So how does the Breadline Africa Worldwide Blogger Bake Off Campaign work?

Quite simply: bake bread, give dough. You can sign up for the campaign, make a donation, upload your bread recipes and document your culinary adventures in the media centre to spread the word. Bloggers can go even further by downloading the Blogger Bake-off widget and tagging five other bloggers to do the same - which I have done.  My five tagged bloggers are:

• Charlotte of Charlotte's Web;

• Ash of Ash in Amsterdam;

• Johanna of The Passionate Cook;

• Elra of Elra's Baking; and

• Deeba of Passionate About Baking.

There are various ways for you to get involved once you've joined the campaign, and you don't need a blog to participate. You can:

• Submit your bread baking recipe
• Make a donation to Breadline Africa
• Vote for your favourite bread recipe that's been submitted 
• Bake a loaf of bread and blog about it
• Bake many loaves of bread and host a bake sale to raise money

Categories in which you can vote for a bread recipe are:

• Most Nutritious
• Most Unusual
• Best Traditional Recipe

Every donation goes towards the $1 million target, and if you spearhead the most donations (still trying to get clarification on the mechanics of this opaque statement from the organisers!), you earn the honour of having a container kitchen in Africa named after you! Plus you will receive an Amazon voucher of $500. The winners with the most votes in each bread recipe category will receive $250 in Amazon vouchers each.

So what are you waiting for - join the Blogger Bake-off.  Bake bread, give dough!

Chocolate, blackberry and almond torte

It seems fitting that, while in the city which was first introduced to me by Ferris Beuller's Day Off, I tried to live by the advice he gives us in the film:

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and take look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Instead of diligently blogging every morning as I thought I might and catching up on the ludicrous number of unread posts in my Google reader, I decided to stop and take a look around.  I went on some architecture tours.  I went to the zoo.  I stood at the top of the Sears Tower, leaning my head on the glass just like they do in Ferris Beuller.  I discovered the unknown pleasures of Filene's Basement.  I smiled at the Tribune Tower every morning.  I said goodnight to the Sears Tower from our apartment every night. I met the very lovely Courtney and made a friend for life.  I spent a happy fifteen minutes in the same room as the painting I have loved since 1995. I stood, entranced, by the Bean (officially, the Cloud Gate) every day.  Man, I love that thing.  I think I may miss it more than I miss Nick, who is still in Chicago. 

But as Ferris said, life moves pretty fast, and while my attention was diverted, the deadline for an event that I had diligently planned to participate in slipped past.  Mea culpa!  Julia of A Slice of Cherry Pie (who I recently met) and Scott of Real Epicurean host a monthly seasonal event called In The Bag, and the September theme was seasonal fruit and nuts.  Somehow I have never managed to participate, and now I am beginning to think I'm cursed :(  Anyway, it's the thought that counts, right?  Next time, guys...  In the meantime, I will instead submit this recipe to Ruth's Bookmarked Recipes event.

I found this torte on the rather delicious Elra's Baking. The lovely Elra hails from Bali but is married to... a South African, which is how we got chatting one day.  She is an extremely accomplished baker and her site is a veritable treasure trove of interesting bread recipes and decadent cakes. Visit once and I guarantee you you'll be back again and again for all the recipes you bookmark!

Although it looked like quite a number of steps, the recipe was not at all complicated or fiddly to make.  I did, as usual though, load the dice against myself by:

a) using a springform pan of a smaller size to the one Elra recommends; and

b) leaving the house with the poor torte in its pan in a bag less than 30 minutes after it came out of the oven. 

   

Like the cheesecake I baked last year, I think the idea is to let it cool completely in the oven before serving, not taking it on a trans-London dash still hot and wobbly...  Clearly I never learn.  So the centre was a little gooier than I'd planned for, and the lighting at the friend's house where the torte was served for dessert was very dim - both of which made for some resoundingly unappetising photos of the served torte. So feast your eyes instead on the fresh blackberries, and the egg mixture being stirred into the chocolate (decadence has a new name!!).  And then print the recipe and go and make it immediately!  It's very rich and very decadent but gluten free, which is a bonus, and I'm sure it would work as well with defrosted frozen berries as with fresh ones. 

CHOCOLATE, BLACKBERRY AND ALMOND TORTE

Ingredients:

260g dark chocolate, chopped
112g butter
zest of one orange
1/4 cup of blackbeery liqueur
5 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/4 cup icing sugar
5 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
pinch of salt
15 fresh blackberries
3-4 Tbsp flaked almonds

Method:

In a dry frying pan, lightly toast the slivered almonds (watch them as they burn easily) and set aside.

In a food processor, process the ground almonds and icing sugar together to form a fine almond flour.  Set aside.

Grease a 22cm springform pan and line with baking parchment.  Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water until almost completely melted.  Remove from the heat, add the orange zest and liqueur and stir until smooth.

Whisk together the egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar until thick and pale yellow.  Stir the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture and set aside.

In a clean bowl and with a clean whisk, beat the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar until foamy.  Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until the egg whites form soft peaks.

Take about a quarter of the egg white mixture and mix it into the chocolate mixture.  Add the almond flour and fold it in well.  Add the rest of the egg whites to the chocolate and fold until just incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared springform tin.  Arrange blackberries on top.  (They will sink in - don't worry, they're meant to!).  Sprinkle toasted almonds on top and bake in the middle of the oven for 25-35 minutes.

Torte is ready when a skewer comes in clean when inserted near the edge, but the centre is still visibly wobbly.  Allow to cool completely in tin before removing and cutting.

Saturday Snapshots #8

 

Beaded giraffe, 2007

South Africans have a long tradition of beadwork, with some tribes like the amaZulu even using beads to compose love-letters.  Enterprising craftsmen have adapted their craft to modern times and these days it is possible to buy a range of non-traditional beaded items, often from roadside vendors in cities.  You can often watch these guys sitting by the roadside with their wire, their beads and a set of pliers, creating beaded works of art seemingly out of nothing.  There is still jewellery on offer, but there are also bowls, boxes, lampshades, mobiles and a mind-boggling menagerie of beaded animals, from beautiful traditional Nguni cattle and life-sized sheep, to elephants, lizards and this 40cm tall giraffe that lives in my lounge in London.

This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister. Click here for a full list of photographs previously featured.  If you like this or any other photo featured in Saturday Snapshots, why not buy it as a greeting card or print in my RedBubble store?

WTSIM #20 - for the love of gourd

Oh the guilt!!

Here I am, living the high life in Chicago with all my good intentions of blogging early every morning in tatters.  I have neglected all you lovely readers.  But in my defense I can say that I have been busy.  I have explored Chicago inside and out.  I have spent 2 amazing days in Washington DC.  I have been to Galena and seen the Mississippi for the first time.  I have been mesmerised, delighted and awe-struck at least once a day since I arrived.  It's heady stuff, I tell you.  So please forgive me and I promise I'll be back and blogging when I return to London.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd better get a move on and announce the theme for this month's Waiter, There's Something in My... event which I am hosting.  In keeping with the seasonal theme, and mindful of the astonishing variety out there, I have decided to go all Halloween on you and pick gourds as the theme. What counts as a gourd?  All pumpkins, squashes, zucchini, pattypans and other vegetables growing on vines - in fact any member of the Cucurbitaceae family.  (I will allow melons too, even though they weren't part of my original plan!)  So I really have left the field wide open - those of you currently experiencing Spring can wow me with your zesty zucchini creations, while those who are experiencing Autumn can pamper me with pumpkin pie.

As usual, here are the rules:

1. Write up your gourd dish on your blog, remembering to include a link back to this announcement in your post.

2.  E-mail me.  Please make sure that Waiter there's something in my features in the subject line.

3. In the e-mail please include:

• the URL of your entry
• your blog's name
• the name of the dish
• your approximate location

4.  The deadline for entries is Saturday 1 November and I hope to have the roundup posted later that week.

5.  When the roundup is posted, please also include a link to that in your post.

See you back here on the 1st - and until then, go with gourd :)

Saturday Snapshots #7

 

The O2,  2007 

Built in 2000, the Millennium Dome in North Greenwich was much maligned during its first year when overruns on budget caused it to make far less money than predicted, with taxpayers footing the bill for the shortfall.  It closed on 31 December 2000 and for at least 6 years it stood empty, a very visible white elephant marooned on a peninsula in the Thames.  New owners O2 rebranded it in 2005 and it reopened as a multi-use entertainment venue.  It now houses cinemas, restaurants, an exhibition space, an intimate venuw for concerts and launch parties, an ice rink in winter, a beach in summer, and a 20 000 seater concert arena where I will see Coldplay in December. 

The picture has been fairly intensively Photoshopped, with the midtone contrast and saturation being pushed as far as they could go.  Even though I don't usually like over-manipulated pictures, I fell in love with the grainy feel and the apocalyptic look of the sky.

This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister. Click here for a full list of photographs previously featured.  If you like this or any other photo featured in Saturday Snapshots, why not buy it as a greeting card or print in my RedBubble store?

London food and wine bloggers meet at Cantaloupe

Hands up - who likes being stood up?

Hmm, not exactly a sea of hands, is it...  And I can guarantee you my hand is not among them.  Why do I ask?  Well, only because I was recently stood up.  A certain food blogger, clearly Far More Important than me, recently e-mailed me out of the blue to say that they would be in town and owed me a drink for something I helped out with last year - could we meet on Tuesday?  Johanna had also  been invited, so the two of us checked our calendars, made some rearrangements and accepted the invitation.  The only things we suggested were to make the drinks fairly early as I had dinner plans, and we suggested an alternative venue nearby.  And then... nothing.  Nada. Zip.  The weekend came and went, as did Monday... and Tuesday.  Not a word.  Not even "oh, sorry, I just realised I'm double booked".  Just silence.  On Wednesday I e-mailed to ask if everything was OK.  More silence.  I might have been worried, had it not been for the fact that said blogger was still blogging, so obviously not face down in a ditch or anything... just not in a mood to meet up with us, or make apologies.  Nice.

So I was quite pleased last week when a lot of other food bloggers were willing to make the effort to keep a date to meet up.  Kind of restores your faith in human nature...

The occasion was the inaugural TrustedPlaces-sponsored food and wine blogger meet, organised by the lovely Walid and Niamh of Eat Like a Girl (now also working for TrustedPlaces - you go girl!).  The venue that they had chosen was Cantaloupe in trendy Shoreditch.  (For pictures of the evening, see my Flickr album.)

It's always a little surreal meeting people for the first time in real life that you've had long online conversations with.  It's like meeting a stranger that you already know ;-)  I started the evening off with two of my favourite wine bloggers, Andrew from Spittoon and Rob from The Wine Conversation but it wasn't long before Walid came over and said "there are two ladies here who'd love to meet you".  I recognised Julia from A Slice of Cherry Pie almost immediately, and chatting to her was the equally lovely Helen from Food Stories.  Great to finally meet both of you!  Not long after that, Krista from Londondelicious introduced me to Simon from Dos Hermanos and we chatted about his recent trip to South Africa. I can't wait to read his account of this section of his Eat The Globe project!  Chatting to Simon was Chris from Cheese and Biscuits, another blogger that i've been reading for a while but had not met, and who is as perfectly charming. 

I started off the evening sitting between Niamh (who should, incidentally, offer prizes to non-Irish people who correctly guess how to pronounce her name!) and Douglas from Intoxicating Prose, but later moved on to long conversation with two charming Americans now blogging in London:  Denise from Wine Sleuth, and the lovely Annemarie from Ambrosia and Nectar, who I've been reading for ages.  And apologies to Laura from Kittens in the Kitchen to whom I only chatted for about 30 seconds - next time we'll chat properly! 

But enough of that - on to the food!  Cantaloupe was reputedly the first bar in the now-trendy Shoreditch area in east London and the vibe is definitely relaxed and laid back.  The long wooden tables and sharing platters of food seem to invite conversation and the bloggers were happy to oblige.  The menu is officially Spanish tapas, but seems to make a turn in all sorts of ports along the Mediterranean as well.  One of our platters was made up of chorizo, jamon and Spanish cheese; another featured calamari rings, spicy chicken wings, albondigas and rather delicious filled tortillas; while a third featured distinctly Middle-Eastern dishes like dolmades, tzatziki and wonderful stuffed mushrooms. Everything I ate was delicious, particularly the tortillas and the mushrooms. The wine list features all things Spanish and South American and is handily divided into wine styles rather than cultivars or countries. The wine we had (I believe it was a Fuzion Tempranillo Malbec blend from Argentina) was perfectly pleasant and inexpensive.  (Refreshingly, there is nothing over 40GBP on the wine list, other than french champagne!).

To finish off our meal, we had some dessert from another source - Fair Cake.  This London-based company will make and deliver their wonderful cupcakes to your door (within the M25). But be warned - they are so popular that small orders of cupcakes are fully booked until 20 November!  And with flavours like mocha, orange flower with lavender, dark chocolate, or white chocolate with berries, it's not hard to see why! Both the chocolate and the vanilla that I tried were moist and delicious - if you have a festive party coming up that needs cupcakes for dessert, I'd go with these guys :-)

After that, things got a bit hazy, which is probably the fault of the delicious but lethal fresh strawberry and unspecified alcohol shots!!  But refusing would have been churlish, so down the hatch they went and my memory followed close on their heels.  Probably for the best that I accompanied Andrew when he left to catch his train as I have heard rumours of sambucca later...!

Thanks again to Niamh and Walid for organising - it really is great to meet face to face with the people you spend so much time with on-line, and it's wonderful to see how London's food and wine blogging scene continues to go from strength to strength.  When's the next one??

Also take a look at Niamh's version of events on the Trusted Places blog

Saturday Snapshots #6

 

Troy, 2007

Troy arrived in our street as a kitten with no return address back in 2004.  Nobody could figure out if he was lost, abandoned, or just on a feline adventure to meet new people.  What was certain, though, was that he was a heartbreaker:  pick him up and he'll put his arms around your neck, nuzzle your nose and stare into your eyes in total adoration. In the end our neighbour adopted him, but he's always known that our house belongs to him too, and that he has me and Nick wrapped around his furry, black little finger.

This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister. Click here for a full list of photographs previously featured.  If you like this or any other photo featured in Saturday Snapshots, why not buy it as a greeting card or print in my RedBubble store?