Jamaican Ginger Bread inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden

A visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden is like stepping into your very own secret garden. Shielded from the frantic traffic of the Chelsea Embankment by high redbrick walls, it offers greenery-starved Londoners a replenishing oasis just ten minutes’ walk from Sloane Square tube station. Originally opened in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries just beside the house that had once belonged to Sir Thomas More, the garden is the oldest botanical garden in the UK, and was once the world’s most abundant botanical garden.

Today it is a tranquil spot that’s ideal for wiling away sunny afternoons, with special events all year round, including a snowdrop walk in winter, when the garden is transformed into something from A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the delicate plants lining pathways in pearly tufts, and even hanging in a snowdrop-mobile from trees.

A trip to the Physic Garden wouldn’t be complete without a pit-stop at the acclaimed Tangerine Dream Café. In the style of the Petersham Nurseries before they were famous, the café is home to a creative menu of savoury dishes, with vegetables picked from the garden, as well as a colourful banquet of freshly baked cakes (think ginger and lime, and almond and rhubarb. It’s only downfall (I should warn you) is the disorganisation of the buffet, where no one seems to have any idea of who is doing what. But you’re so relaxed by this point, and the food is so delicious, that all is quickly forgiven.

With herbs, spices and all manner of plants from across the globe, I’ve added extra spice to this this Jamaican Ginger Bread recipe from Delia’s Cakes to reflect the aromas and tastes on offer at the Chelsea Physic Garden and Tangerine Dream Café.

Jamaican Ginger Bread inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden

Ingredients

175g Plain Flour
3 tbsp Ground Ginger
2 tbsp Ground Cinnamon
½ Nutmeg, grated
½ tdp Bicarbonate of Soda
2 tbsp Whole Milk
75g Black Treacle
75g Golden Syrup
75g soft Brown Sugar
75g Unsalted Butter
1 large Egg (beaten)

Pre-heat the oven to 170C or gas mark 3.

Start by greasing a standard loaf tin, and set aside. In order to weigh treacle it’s best to place the tin in a saucepan of gently simmering water to loosen it up.

Meanwhile, sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add all the spices. In a jug mix the bicarbonate of soda together with the milk and set aside.

Once the treacle is softened, measure it out into a saucepan together with the golden syrup, butter and 75ml water over a low heat. Stir until the butter is melted and all the ingredients are combined (don’t let it boil).

Tip the warmed ingredients into the flour and beat until the mixture is smooth. Next add the egg a bit at a time and finally the bicarbonate of soda and milk.
Pour the batter into your prepared loaf tin.

Delia’s recipe says to bake for 1 ¼ – 1 ½ hours, but I find it’s ready in under an hour, so it’s best to keep an eye on it from the 45 minute mark. If you find it’s starting to brown on top but is still raw in the middle when you insert a skewer, then cover it in tinfoil and continue baking.

Allow the cake to cool for 5 – 10 minutes before turning out. Store in a cake tin (if there’s any left after its first teatime outing!).

Port & Sage Chicken Liver Pâté

I sometimes wonder why we have a problem with offal. Why the thighs and breasts and fillets are so delectable, when the livers and kidneys and hearts are so often left off the menu. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as squeamish about eating sheep’s brain as the next person. But I know this is more to do with my mind than my stomach.

Over the last few years offal has been making a comeback. And in leaner times it makes perfect sense, because apart from offering tastes and textures you just don’t get with the perfectly packaged and gut-free supermarket meat we’ve all become used to, it’s much, much cheaper. For example, when buying 500g of chicken livers for this recipe, they came to £1.75. £1.75! For meat! For enough pâté to feed a small army!

Yes, offal is a steal. And if, like me, you’re still getting your head around offal adoption, pâté is the perfect solution.

Port and Sage Chicken Liver Pâté

Ingredients
500g Chicken Livers
2 Shallots
175g Butter
2tsp Sage Leaves
120ml Port
1 Garlic Clove
Salt & Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Chop the livers into chunks of about 1 inch in size.

Finely dice the shallots, and sauté in a knob of the butter over a medium heat until the shallots are soft. Chop the sage and garlic, and add to the pan, and cook for a minute or so. Tip the mixture into a bowl and set aside.

Next add another knob of butter to the pan, and turn up the heat to medium-high. Sauté the livers until brown on the outside, but still pink on the inside. Add the port, and tip the shallots back in, and stir until the port is reduced to a thick sauce (you should have around 2tbsp of thick liquid).

Transfer to a food processor and blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add 100g of the butter in chunks, and blend again until combined.

At this stage the pâté will be very grainy, so you’ll need to push the mixture through a sieve using the back of a spoon, to get that nice smooth texture we all associate with perfect pâté.

Once you’ve finished sieving the pâté, transfer it to a serving dish and place the pate in the fridge. Meanwhile melt the remaining butter. Pour the melted butter over the top of the pâté, and return to the fridge until the butter is set.

Serve with crusty bread, salad, or oatcakes.

Perfect Crumbly Honeycomb

The very first time I made honeycomb it was an unmitigated disaster. Rather than snapping into the perfect crumbly chunks I’d been hoping for, my sheet of hardened sugar turned out to not be so hardened after all, and it bent alarmingly. As I strained it in one direction, and then another, it proved itself to be almost unbreakable. And when I finally managed to part an amber shard from the now cylindrical mess on my kitchen counter, the all important taste test confirmed my worst fears: sticky, chewy, gluey clumps of sugar clamped my jaw shut.

I knew there was something very wrong, and decided to dig deeper. Most recipes you read about making honeycomb tell you to watch for the boiling sugar to turn the colour of maple syrup before adding the bicarbonate of soda. But if you’re like me and your mental picture of maple syrup is several shades lighter than the real stuff, or if you’d simply like a more precise way of being sure you’re adding the bicarb at exactly the right moment (because even a minute can make all the difference), then this method is for you.

The trick, as I discovered from this incredibly helpful post from The Paddington Foodie, is to ensure the sugar reaches 150C. If you have a sugar thermometer then you are all set, but if not the article above explains perfectly how to test your sugar to make sure it’s reached the ‘hard crack stage’.

This recipe is from BBC Good Food, with added instructions to ensure for perfect, crumbly honeycomb.

Perfect Crumbly Honeycomb

Ingredients
200g Caster Sugar
5tbsp Golden Syrup
2tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
Unsalted butter for greasing

The most important thing about making honeycomb is to be prepared. And once you’ve done that, it really is very easy. Start by greasing a small baking tray (around 20cm) with unsalted butter and set aside. Make sure you have your sugar thermometer (if using) and bicarbonate of soda to hand, ready for the all important moments when they’ll be coming in handy.

In a large (ideally heavy-based) saucepan, heat the sugar and golden syrup, stirring them gently to combine, until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Next increase the heat, and insert the sugar thermometer into the bubbling liquid. Do not stir from this point onwards or your honeycomb will be tough!

Bring the sugar mixture up to 150C – this tends to take around 10 minutes. As soon as it reaches 150C immediately bring off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda with a wooden spoon, being incredibly careful as the sugar will be very hot. The mixture will bubble up and turn a lovely amber colour.

Quickly tip the liquid honeycomb into your prepared baking sheet, and leave to cool for at least an hour (you can do this in the fridge to ensure the honeycomb is completely cold).

Once cooled break the honeycomb into chunks. I do this with a pallet knife rather than a rolling pin, as some recipes advise, as I find the sharper edge helps to create cleaner lines.

The honeycomb will keep for weeks in an airtight container. And don’t forget to save the crumbs to sprinkle over ice cream.

Jammy Christmas Biscuits

I must confess I have very staunch beliefs about when it’s too early to start playing Christmas music, unveiling Christmas shop window displays, or lighting Christmas lights. But when it comes to Christmas cooking I find myself in a grey area. Is October too soon for an early mince pie? Is it wrong to hanker after mulled wine in September? I’m really not sure.

And so when I stumbled across this recipe for Christmas biscuits – which are basically just posh Jammy Dodgers – in mid-October I couldn’t resist rolling up my sleeves and making a batch, with the promise to myself that I would freeze the biscuits and add the filling when it got closer to the big day. But once I got started I couldn’t help wanting to see them fully formed, stuffed full of butter cream and jam. So I made them all. And then I made another batch. And then another. And no I’m going to have to find some non-festive cookie cutter shapes so I can enjoy them all year round.

This recipe is from Waitrose Magazine, with only very small adaptions (mostly based on what I had to hand). I’ve also used blueberry jam instead of raspberry as it’s a bit less sweet, but you can experiment with any type of jam you fancy, or make your own if you’re feeling particularly creative.

Jammy Christmas Biscuits

Ingredients

For the Biscuits

425g Flour (extra for dusting)
1/2 tsp Salt
200g Caster Sugar
225g Unsalted Butter (chilled)
1 Large Egg
1 Large Egg Yolk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

For the Filling

125g Unsalted Butter (room temperature)
300g Icing Sugar
100g Blueberry Jam (approx.)

Preheat the oven to 180’C/Gas Mark 4.

First start with the biscuits: pulse the flour, salt and sugar in a food processor to combine. Add the butter and blend until the the mixture looks like light breadcrumbs, before adding the egg and egg yolk and vanilla extract, and blend briefly until the batter starts to come together.

Tip out the dough and kneed gently by hand until it forms a smooth ball. Divide the mixture in half and press each section into an oval. Wrap in cling film and chill for around an hour.

While the dough is chilling, make the butter cream. In a large bowl cream the butter with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually mix in the icing sugar. Once both ingredients are fully combined turn the electric mixer speed to high and beat until light and fluffy. From this stage the butter cream can be refrigerated for a couple of days, or frozen, but I’d recommend removing from the fridge/defrosting fully at least an hour before you want to use it as otherwise it will be too hard to spread on the biscuits – I’ve broken several biscuits by becoming impatient about waiting for the buttercream to reach room temperature again)

Once the dough has firmed, roll it out on a floured surface until it’s around 3mm thick. Using a round cookie cutter (approx 8 inches or whichever size you prefer). Cut as many discs as possible. Re-roll out the excess and cutting more circles (if the dough begins to get too soft place back in the fridge before rolling again).

Use a small festive-shaped cutter to cut out the centre of half the biscuits. Place all the biscuits on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden/brown at the edges.

Allow the biscuits to cool completely on a wire rack before adding the filling – otherwise the buttercream will melt into a sugary buttery mess when you try to spread it. From this stage the biscuits can be frozen, unassembled, or kept in an air-tight container for 7-10 days).

Once the biscuits are cool, spread or pipe the butter cream onto the bases, and top with a tsp of jam. Carefully place a cutout biscuit on top and press down gently.

Serve with mulled wine or a cup of tea.

 

Festival Squash, Ricotta and Parma Ham Salad

This was the first time I have ever cooked with – or eaten for that matter – festival squash and I am completely and utterly converted. A smaller cousin of pumpkins and butternut squash, the festival variety is packed full of flavour, and works well in soups, salads, or mash. Like their relatives, festival squash can be stored for up to a month, so they’re a wonderful vegetable to have on hand to use whenever the need arises. If you spot one when you’re next out at the supermarket/farmers market/wherever you buy your vegetables from I strongly advise you to give one of these stripy squash a loving home. You won’t be disappointed.

This recipe is based on one by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and can be served warm or cold, but either way it’s a satisfying winter salad. I really like the way the saltiness of the ham plays against the sweetness of the squash, with the creaminess of the ricotta marrying them both together, and will definitely be making this again.

Festival Squash, Ricotta and Parma Ham Salad
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 Festival Squash
A Couple of Sprigs of Thyme
2 Garlic Cloves (whole and unpeeled)
Olive Oil
Garlic
75g Ricotta
6 Pieces Parma Ham (or Serano ham would work nicely too)

Preheat the oven to 190C.

First peel and chop the squash into chunks, scooping out the seeds from the middle. (But do not, on any account, throw away the seeds – once roasted they’re a delicious snack in their own right, or they can be tossed over soups and salads for a bit of crunch – see recipe suggestion here).

Place the squash, garlic and thyme in a roasting tray and roast for around 45 minutes until the squash is soft and slightly brown at the edges.

Remove the thyme and garlic and discard, and place the squash on a serving plate. Tear each slice of Parma ham in half lengthways and drape around the squash. Finish by dotting the salad with spoonfuls of ricotta. Season with freshly ground black pepper if desired.

Roast Carrot and Thyme Soup

When I was growing up carrot and coriander soup was one of the only forms in which my mother could prise vegetables past my stubborn lips. After hours of tears and tantrums over uneaten plates of courgettes, or carefully picked out piles of peas (cunningly made into a fish pie for good measure), my poor mother did what every long suffering parent does at one time or another – she took the path of least resistance. And so on the days when the battles just weren’t worth it, we had carrot and coriander soup – one of my all time favourite foods.

My life-long love affair with this king of soups means I am always on the lookout for variations that I can add to my repertoire. And when I bought a thyme plant for my windowsill in London, finding a soup that combined this delicate herb with one of the best soup ingredients there is was essential. And with my sad history of gardening disasters, it was important to do it quickly.

BBC Good Food’s Roast Carrot Soup turned out to be a delicious combination of flavours. It’s richer than traditional carrot and coriander as roasting the carrots and garlic adds a caramelised undertone – making for a hearty winter soup.

I substitute plain yoghurt or creme fraiche instead of cream to make the soup a bit lighter, but you can of course use cream if you prefer. This recipe serves between two and four people depending on portion size. Serve with crusty bread or oatcakes.

Roast Carrot and Thyme Soup

Ingredients

350g Carrots
1tbsp Olive Oil
2 Garlic Cloves
A Couple of Sprigs of Thyme
1 Onion
350ml Chicken Stock
Plain Yoghurt or Crème Fraîche to taste

Serves 2 – 4. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Peel the carrots and cut into batons. Toss in a drizzle of olive oil together with the garlic cloves (whole and unpeeled) and thyme sprigs. Roast in the oven for around 45 minutes until the carrots are soft and they’ve turned lovely caramelised golden colour.

While the carrots are roasting get the stock ready (NB it’s best to only use a quarter of a cube to prevent the soup becoming too salty).

Heat the oil in a large pan. Dice the onion and tip into the pan, sautéing over a low heat until transparent (about 10 mins). Add the roasted carrots, removing any particularly touch thyme sprigs. Squeeze the soft garlic out of its shells and add to the pan. Pour over the stock and simmer for 10 minutes.

Take the soup off the heat and ladle into a blender. Process until smooth.

Pour into a clean pan and warm through. If the soup is looking too thick at this stage add more hot water if necessary. Stir through yoghurt or crème fraîche just before serving and garnish with a few thyme leaves.