when you begin to believe summer will come...

strawberries + blueberries make a summery snack in the garden
no strawberries are ready yet this far north - these came from italy and the blueberries from spain

yesterday was the first glorious sunny day of the late spring. it almost made us believe in summer. we took full advantage, spending the entire day outdoors in one form or another - from a lunchtime picnic on the lawn to hanging up a swing to getting out the iron garden "couch" and pillows and having a little afternoon snooze with birdsong accompaniment. an easy, springy fish dinner with new potatoes and white asparagus.

a summer picnic consisting of sandwiches with paté and some with tuna
homemade rhubarb syrup* mixed into a cool drink.
and a danish summer diary treat - koldskål with crunchy müsli ton top

although i bought my koldskål (literally translated: cold bowl) in the grocery store, it is possible to make it and it's wonderful when you do, but the organic one we can buy here in the store is so yummy i took the easy route.

koldskål

1 liter (quart) buttermilk

1 C yogurt

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla (or one vanilla bean, scraped with a knife) for the pretty little black flecks)

1/2 C sugar

juice of half a lemon

whir it all up in a blender. you can add a handful of strawberries to the blender if you have some. otherwise, serve it with some sliced strawberries. what's traditional is little round, hard cookies called kammerjunker. but a homemade or store-bought müsli is just fine to sprinkle on the top. here we even have one that's specifically for koldskål. 

a light late spring almost summer dinner.
kuller (in the cod family) fish with homemade bread crumbs on top
new potatoes with butter
white asparagus on a bed of fresh spinach & the first of the garden onions

easy cod with homemade breadcrumbs

4-6 fish filets with the skin still on (any fish will do - ours was kuller, which is a member of the cod family)

5-6 slices of day-old, slightly hard bread (i used some of my homemade focaccia)

seasoning salt of your choice (i used a cajun one)

knob of cold butter

whir the bread, butter and seasoning together in your food processor on pulse until they are large, chunky crumbs, but not totally pulverized. dip the fish filet (just the fish side, not the skin side) in egg, then lay it, skin side down in an oven-ready dish that you've brushed with a little olive oil and sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. pop it in the oven for 20 or so minutes at 175°C/350°F. you can turn on the grill at the end to get the bread crumbs nice and toasty.

a bruschetta starter with tomatoes that are starting to taste of something again.

i served a little bruschetta starter - drizzling some of yesterday's focaccia with olive oil and a bit of prima donna (salty aged gouda) over the top and giving it a little toast in the oven. meanwhile, i diced some tomatoes, threw in a few mint leaves (it's what i had and gave a more spring-like tone than basil, but use what you have), a clove of garlic, salt, pepper and a drizzle of good olive oil.

the meal, all plated up - with a bit of creme fraiche dressing at twelve o'clock.

i know white asparagus is considered a real delicacy, but i'll admit to you that i prefer green any day. the fat little stems, intentionally starved for sun just don't do it for me, but it came in our box this week, so i decided to give it another chance. the skin on white asparagus is awfully tough, so you have to carefully peel it off with a vegetable peeler. i'd advise you to do it against a cutting board and not trying to hold it, as it will be less likely to break the asparagus that way. after it's peeled, it just needs 4-5 minutes of steaming and it's ready. i put it together with the following spinach dish and that made it better.

fresh spinach with onions & breadcrumbs

1 large bag of spinach - carefully rinsed and the big stems discarded

1 small onion, thinly sliced

handful of bread crumbs (i had some left from the fish)

knob of butter

olive oil

salt & pepper

melt the butter and olive oil together in a large pan - a wok is ideal, because the spinach seems like a LOT at the beginning (it wilts down to nothing quickly). throw in the onions and sauté them. these were fresh, spring ones (without being spring onions), so they didn't take long. add the bread crumbs and toast them a little bit before adding the rinsed spinach. keep stirring. the spinach will wilt and you'll be very surprised how little there is. when it was done, i placed it in a bowl and arranged the white asparagus on top with a little pat of butter on it. the spinach definitely made the asparagus more of a delicacy. 

served with simply boiled new potatoes and a creme fraiche to which i had added the cajun seasoning i was using completed this springy, almost summer meal.

* i'll be doing an all rhubarb post in the near future, but to tide you over, i've done a rhubarb cocktail over here and it tells how to make the syrup.

simple meals for busy times

i've been a bit absent from this blog of late as we packed up nearly a decade of life in our home and moved across the country to new jobs and a new house on an old farm property. my new kitchen is a severe downgrade in comparison to the old one (we're going to remedy that, don't worry) and i'll admit to a mild depression over having to cook here amidst the pepto bismol pink color the last owner chose to paint the cupboards (seriously, who would think that color would look good in a kitchen?). since it's going to be about a year before we redo the kitchen, i'll be painting those cupboards in shades of teal leftover from my famous blue room over this coming long holiday weekend (ascension day makes for a four-day weekend in denmark).

one thing i found in the midst of the chaos that is a move is that our desire to eat was not lessened in proportion to how busy we now were. so i had to find ways to cook simple meals that required few dishes, as my selection of dishes, pots and pans got pared down as more and more of that stuff was packed down.

i came up with a couple of delicious solutions that were easy, but look deceptively like you slaved for hours. a pasta dish and veal parmesan. not necessarily to be eaten together, tho' you could if you were really hungry.

simple pasta with red pesto and zucchini ribbons

this pasta dish is super easy because you use those packages of fresh pasta you can buy in the refrigerated case in the supermarket, the best pesto you can find (also purchased from the supermarket and preferably from the refrigerated section not just a jar) and a single zucchini, sliced into thin ribbons using a potato peeler. it's super quick (the fresh pasta takes only 3 minutes). you simply toss the pasta, pesto and raw zucchini ribbons together in a big bowl and dig in. a very posh meal literally in minutes. i can see from my picture that i also tossed in a bit of asparagus that i cut into bite-sized pieces and threw in with my pasta for the last minute or so of the boil. just long enough that it's still green and brilliant. the zucchini cooks just enough from being tossed with the warm pasta, so you don't need to cook it at all.

the second easy dish i've made of late is a big pan of veal parmesan. on our last night in the old house, we invited our neighbors for dinner and i made this, making sure that i made enough for us to take a pan of it with us to the new house - it felt symbolically important to make food in the old house and bring it to the new one to eat the first day.

veal parmesan

you may be thinking that i'm crazy to say that veal parmesan is easy and you'd be right if i told you to spend six hours stirring up the perfect sauce from scratch, but that's not what i did, there simply wasn't time for that. i bought a jar of good quality tomato sauce - Dolmio classico organic to be exact.

veal parmesan

100 grams of very thinly-sliced veal weinerschnitzel per person - i have the butcher slice it for me as thin as he can (so thin he thinks i'm crazy)

1 jar good quality tomato (pasta) sauce

2-3 medium-sized onions

1 thinly-sliced eggplant (if you like it)

2 eggs

breadcrumbs

finely grated parmesan cheese

pound your veal with one of those meat-pounding thingies (mine came from ikea) - it's very therapeutic and relieves stress nicely. you want it to be super, super thin, like thin enough to read something through it if you laid it over a newspaper. 

mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan together and dip the veal in egg and your breadcrumbs. you can season the breadcrumbs with salt & pepper. i used Lawry's seasoning salt as well, but use whatever you like.

brown them up in a pan. while they're browning, slice the onions into small boats and put them in the bottom of an oven-safe dish. layer the veal on them as it gets done. put more onions between layers. if you like eggplant, layer browned eggplant slices together with the veal. cover the whole thing in the jar of tomato sauce and grate a bit of your favorite cheese over the top (we love prima donna at our house - it's an aged gouda with salt crystals in it). pop it into the oven at 175°C/350°F and bake for 30 minutes or so (depending how fast your oven is). serve it with some good bread and an arugula salad. it's very filling, so you don't need pasta with it, but you can serve pasta to soak up some of the good sauce.

make extra so you have some the next day. it's great cold put onto some good ciabatta bread as a sandwich, but it warms up very nicely again in the oven. we really thought it was the perfect meal on our first night in the new house, after a long day of driving and unpacking the truck. like most tomato-sauce dishes, it tastes even better the second day.

these are deceptively simple. make them the next time you want to look like a superwoman (or man). :-) and just pretend you slaved all day.

a burger is not just a burger

like most families, we love a good burger. and we do succumb to the occasional trip to the golden arches (tho' we always regret it afterwards, unless the only thing we got is one of those mcflurry with daim and extra caramel (but i digress)). but the best burgers are the ones we do ourselves at home.

i tend to make it as easy on myself as possible, because burgers are always something we do when we've had a busy day otherwise and we don't feel we have that much time, but want something yummy. i buy good quality organic ground beef, some kind of posh buns, a few ripe avocados for guacamole, a tub of greek yogurt for tzatziki, a jar of pickled jalapeños, some arugula, some ready-made indian pickles.

tonight, we also had a mango around, so i diced it, threw it together with a few green onions and tossed it in a ready-made goma (japanese sesame) dressing from a sushi place. i always make a big bowl of guacamole as well, as for us, no burger is complete without it. and yes, a mish-mash of styles - mexican, japanese, indian, is all right by us. this time, it was even more complicated, as i drizzled the ciabatta buns with truffle oil before i toasted them. it was a veritable international feast all one one plate.  but a burger holds up to that, doesn't it?

it's all very simple - in this case, i had strange long ciabatta buns strafed with cheese, so i shaped my hamburger accordingly. i seasoned it simply with salt and a sprinkle of the fajita seasoning i use in my guacamole - fiesta makes the best one in my humble opinion.

tho' none of this is actually complicated enough to warrant recipes, i'll show you how simple it is by sharing the guacamole and tzatziki recipes....

guacamole

3-4 ripe avocados (depending on how many you are serving - i use approximately one per person, but we're big fans)

1/2 an onion, finely diced

1 small tomato, finely diced

handful of cilantro (this evening, i didn't have cilantro, but i did have those beautiful deep green garlicky ramsons (ramsløg) that can be found in the forests around us at the moment)

1 small chili, finely diced (i do leave this out when serving children, or make them their own bowl without it, but tend to serve it on the side for those who like it with a bit more kick)

fiesta fajita seasoning to taste

juice of a lime or half a lemon (whichever you have on hand)

scoop out the avocado into a bowl and mash it with a fork, add the diced onion, tomato, cilantro and chili and season with the fajita seasoning. if you lack fajita seasoning, a bit of salt and a garlic pepper will do. squeeze the lemon over it to keep it from discoloring. 

tzatziki

1 cup (250 grams) greek yogurt (i like the thickness it offers as opposed to ordinary yogurt)

1 6" section of cucumber, grated (grate into a sieve and squeeze out the excess liquid)

1 clove of garlic (or a handful of ramsons, finely chopped)

stir up and enjoy! 

think posh the next time you serve burgers. if you invest in good ground beef, why not splurge on other ingredients? a bit of truffle oil, fancier buns, a spicy indian pickle, some posh mizuna greens or peppery arugula, a fresh pesto...the possibilities are only as limited as your imagination. 

what to eat with a south african white wine

lovely whites from cybercellar.com

late last year, via twitter, surely after i was tweeting on about chenin blanc, i was contacted by cyber cellar, an online south african wine seller. even before that, south african wines were my new world wine of choice. mostly because i had visited spier and delheim and a couple of other smaller wineries on my two business trips to south africa, so i felt i had more relationship to south african wines than any of the other new world wines. the wonderful folks at cyber cellar sent me enough bottles for two wine tastings. i had in mind a (then) upcoming christmas gathering and my january blog camp as occasions for those tastings. well, there was a lot of flu going around at christmas and so that occasion didn't happen. at blog camp, we tried a couple of the wines, but the focus was elsewhere and we didn't do a proper tasting.

i'll admit i felt ill equipped to talk authoritatively about the various wines cyber cellar had sent, as i had only what information i could glean from the quick blurb on their website and the wineries' own websites, so i never felt bold enough to advertise and hold a proper tasting. thus, i've been sitting with 8 bottles of wine (out of 12) left and a very guilty conscience, since i hadn't done a very good job of helping cyber cellars find some new customers. and thanks to our own chaos around here with moving and such, i haven't even ordered for myself yet, which i definitely want to do. so in all, i've been hanging my head a little bit in shame after they were so generous to me.

but on wednesday, it hit me, what i love most about wine (aside from drinking it on a daily basis) is pairing it with food. and food (despite my absence from this blog of late) i can do. so i went to see my wonderful fish man (i'm gonna miss him when we move) and i got a selection of things that would be lovely with the perdeberg chenin blanc and the cowlin chardonnay semillion i had left.

since it's spring and still the season for stenbiderrogn, which i wrote about previously, we started with that. the fresh brightness of the perdeberg chenin blanc was the perfect complement to the light, springy taste of the caviar. it cut nicely through the creaminess of the créme fraîche and let the pop of the eggs shine through.

since we wanted to try a variety of different fish with the two whites, we ate rather tapas-style, with several small dishes, rather than starting with an appetizer and moving onto a main dish. i stuffed two golden foreller (a kind of trout) with shallots, ginger and cilantro, drizzled them with golden, local cold-pressed rapeseed oil and poached them in some of the chardonnay semillion. while they were poaching in the little oven, i steamed some asparagus and did up a handful of scallops that had been marinated in the same flavors in the grill pan. a big loaf of our beloved focaccia bread came out of the big oven just as we were ready to sit down. (don't worry, all recipes will follow.) to make it a meal, i stirred up a golden garlicky aïoli mayonnaise to slather on the bread and eat with the big bowl of dill-poached crayfish that the child had requested (and which she ate most of singlehandedly). we can buy the crayfish frozen and already cooked in the dill, so all we do is thaw them, so i'm afraid i have no recipe for that bit.

the light was starting to go and not great for this picture in light of my reluctance to use flash, but you get the idea.

rounding off the deliciousness was some smoked cod egg (torskerogn) and a couple of delectable slices of smoked tuna, both of which were gorgeous with the homemade mayonnaise. they're pictured here on swedish flat bread from today's lunch, but we ate them with the homemade focaccia last night.

smoked cod egg on the left, smoked tuna on the right

the cowlin chardonnay-semillion was the perfect companion to the heavy oiliness of the smoked fish. it both lightened and brightened the heavy smoky taste of both - i think they were smoked in a similar way and both could have a tendency towards heaviness, but the chardonnay-semillion stood up to them nicely. the right wine really can make the meal.

and now for the recipes....

my favorite focaccia

adapted from jamie oliver

1 block organic yeast

pinch of flaky sea salt (i love maldon's best)

1 glug of good olive oil (a couple tablespoons?)

1 squeeze of runny honey

2 C (1/2 liter) lukewarm water

4-5 C of flour - i often mix 1/3 spelt flour and the rest good organic white flour, but use what you have around. the more rough your flour, the heavier the bread will be.

give the liquids and yeast and salt a whirl in your mixer with the dough hook in place and then let it sit until it begins to froth up a bit (about five minutes), then add the flour.

mix in your mixer with the dough hook until it comes together in a sticky knot on the dough hook. it will still be a little bit sticky. if it looks too sticky, add a bit more flour - in my experience flour varies a lot, even if you use the same brand, but especially if you're using speciality, stone-ground flours, which i like to do. it can be anywhere from 4-6 cups you need.

set the dough to rise under a tea towel in large bowl that you've dabbed with olive oil and a sprinkling of flour.  you can ignore it all day or let it rise only an hour or so, whatever fits your schedule.  once it's risen, spread it out flat on a baking pan that's lined with baking paper.  make some dimples with your fingers, then drizzle olive oil over it. sprinkle with a good pink of flaky salt crystals and whatever herbs you have at hand. i usually grate a bit of cheese over the top - my favorite is prima donna, a salty aged gouda, but i've been known to use parmesan or cheddar - i really use whatever i've got in the fridge.

let it rise again for 30-45 minutes if you have time. bake approx. 30 minutes at 180°C/375°F. my oven is faster than that, so keep an eye on it. it's done when you knock on it and it seems crispy. it shouldn't seem soft. and it will be quite flat still, not more than about 3cm high.

i make this bread several times a week and it always disappears immediately.

stuffed, poached trout

2 small-medium trout, which your fish monger has cleaned for you (e.g. the guts are gone and their belly is ready to fill with goodness)

1 big hunk of fresh ginger

1 medium shallot

rapeseed oil (it's a bright, beautiful yellow, but you can just as well use olive oil)

handful of fresh cilantro

good glug of white wine

chop the shallot and the ginger finely and mix them together in a bowl. drizzle with rapeseed oil and season with salt and pepper. place the trout in an oven-safe dish and stuff them with the shallot-ginger mix and as much cilantro as the trout can hold. pour over about a cup (250ml) or so of white wine and place them in the oven to poach at 150°C/350°F for 15-20 minutes (depending on how fat your trout are).

i served them with steamed asparagus that had melted butter and a squeeze of lemon over it.

i love that beautiful bright gold of the rapeseed oil

aïoli - garlic mayonnaise

2 cloves garlic, salted and crushed with a mortar and pestle

2 egg yolks

1 T vinegar

a good oil - i used a combination of rapeseed oil and olive oil, but it's up to you.

i have taken a long time to perfect making mayonnaise and i will admit it doesn't work for me every time - sometimes it's more of a runny sauce than an actual mayonnaise. the key is in adding the oil slowly enough. i've tried making it by hand and in a blender and with a hand mixer, but have found that it succeeds most often if i use my big food processor. first, i crush the garlic into a paste with a good pinch of salt in my mortar and pestle. i give the egg yolks a whirl with the vinegar in the meantime, then i add the garlic to them and begin very, very slowly to add the oil. i usually start with the lighter oil - in this case, the golden rapeseed oil because it is lighter than olive oil. the photo above is a HUGE stream in comparison to what it should be at first, it should be as thin as a hair at first. after about a minute or so at the very slow speed, you can begin to increase the amount or switch to olive oil if you want that rich, green flavor. this time, i made it only with the rapeseed oil because i wanted it to be really golden and i wanted to make it with ingredients produced in denmark. it made for a lighter mayonnaise than when you use olive oil. i actually think it's a bit easier to make it come together as a mayonnaise if you use the rapeseed oil rather than straight olive oil. but i'd love to hear from any of you who have mayonnaise-making experience. i think it can be a temperamental thing.

in all, this fish feast felt like a very springy, eastery thing to eat. and the lightness of the south african whites, both of them, were really the perfect complement to the food. if you're interested in these wines, you should definitely check out cybercellar.com as they will ship just about anywhere! please do tell them i sent you, if only to ease my guilty conscience!

i'll present some wonderful south african reds and the food to go with them in a few days.

Pad Thai

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Thai cooking course . . . and it was good fun . . . but I couldn't help but realize, about half-way through the class, that it wasn't going to lead to recipes that I could make for dinner. First of all, it involved lots of chopping and lots of ingredients that I wasn't likely to have on hand -- not great for those evenings when I have a late pick-up from school.   These are minor problems, though, compared to the eating prohibitions imposed by my family.  My husband doesn't like curry, coconut milk (for health reasons) or spicy things; my daughter doesn't like any kind of seafood.

I love those Thai flavors, though.  Peanuts. Lemongrass. Coriander. Ginger.

Even though I want to abandon the typical winter fare, our weather isn't really cooperating.  In late March in England, it's still cold and wet and there's not any exciting seasonal produce, either.  Somehow, the spicy, aromatic, fresh tastes of Thai food seem just-right to me right now.

The one thing that everyone in my family loves is noodles, so I have been concentrating all of my efforts on perfecting my Pad Thai recipe.  It is quick to make, delicious to eat, and has just enough flavor to please me -- but not enough to put off the rest of my family.  Pad Thai, like any kind of stir fried dish, is really just a blueprint . . . and I have experimented a lot with this recipe.  I started off using rice noodles, which are thin and brittle and must be soaked for an hour before you stir-fry them.  They burn very easily, though, and absorb lots of oil; so after some trial and error, I decided that ribbon noodles were a much better deal.  (I buy a brand called Sharwood's Thai ribbon noodles, and they can be found in my usual grocery store.)  After five or six attempts at this dish, this is the version we've liked the best, but it can certainly be altered to suit your own taste.  If you like more bite, you could add some diced red or green chilli peppers.  Shrimp is good with it, too.

Ingredients:
for stir-fry
shallot or small red onion
garlic -- one or two cloves
a knob of grated or chopped ginger
a couple of tablespoons of groundnut (or vegetable) oil
thinly sliced red pepper
a couple of handfuls of bean sprouts
4 to 6 ounces of cooked chicken
a 300 gram/12 ounce package of ribbon noodles
one egg, lightly beaten
chopped coriander (or cilantro, if you are in the U.S.)

for sauce
two tablespoons of fish sauce
juice from a lime
one tablespoon of sugar
one tablespoon of tamarind sauce
one tablespoon of smooth peanut butter
a handful of salted peanuts

Method:

Assemble the ingredients for the sauce in a dish and gently warm -- just enough so the peanut butter will amalgamate with the rest of the ingredients.

Chop/dice all of the vegetables and the chicken.  You want to have everything ready before you begin, because it will only take about 5 minutes to cook this dish.
Heat the oil in a large nonstick saucepan or wok until warm, but not sputtering.  You want to GENTLY cook the shallot (or red onion).  As it begins to soften, add the chopped garlic and ginger.  Cook for just a minute, and then add the red pepper and the noodles.  (Note:  you may need to pull apart the noodles with your thumb and fingers.)  Stir quickly, until the noodle mixture is evenly coated with the oil -- and then add a lightly beaten egg (or two) to a clean section of the pan.  As soon as it is just scrambled, lightly incorporate the egg into the rest of the dish and add the bean sprouts and the chicken.  Finally, add the sauce and toss until evenly coated.

To serve, toss with a handful of peanuts and chopped coriander (or cilantro).
This serves two, but you can easily double it.

Sláinte!

Hot Cross Buns and a glass of Irish Stout

I said that I was finished with Hot Cross Buns, but then Dan Lepard's recipe came along to tempt me.  Soaking the fruit in hot black tea . . . and fermenting the sponge in Irish stout . . .  could there be a better way of celebrating the Irish and the Lenten season? 

My daughter says this is the best batch yet:  lots of fruit and a rich malty flavor.  Is it just my imagination, or does stout have a chocolate bouquet?  Maybe not, but the smell in my kitchen was incredible.

Ingredients:

325 ml Irish stout

1 1/2 tsp each of ground ginger, cinnamon and mace (or mixed spice)

1 1/2 tsp dry instant yeast

875 g strong white four

325 g raisins (or currants and sultanas)

175 g mixed peel, or finely chopped dried apricots

250 ml hot black tea

1 large egg

50 g melted butter

50 g caster sugar

1/1/2 tsp salt

Method:

The night before, mix the stout, spices, yeast and 325 g flour in a deep bowl.  Put the raisins, peel and tea in another bowl.  (Cover both bowls with cling film.)

Next day, mix the egg and butter with the fruit, then stir into the beer and spice batter.

Mix in 550g flour, the sugar and salt, and leave for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil your hands and patch of worktop or cutting board.

Knead the dough for 10 seconds, leave for 10 minutes, repeat twice more at 10-minute intervals, and then leave for an hour.  If the dough is too sticky, lightly flour the surface of it as you knead.

Divide the dough into 100 g pieces, shape into balls and place, touching, on a tray lined with nonstick paper.  Leave for 90 minutes.

Mix a couple of tablespoons of flour, a tablespoon of caster sugar and enough water to make a pourably thick paste.  Pipe crosses on each ball. 

Bake at 200C/400F for approximately 25 minutes.

While the buns are still hot, brush with a glaze made from a tablespoon each of caster sugar and boiling water.

To your health!

a pale green tulip for St. Patrick's Day

Hot Cross Buns

For some inexplicable reason, (but I will attribute it to the unseasonably cold weather), I have become obsessed with hot cross buns this spring. I’m on a quest for the perfect recipe, and it’s already been quite the long process. After my fourth batch, my oldest daughter warned me that I’m in danger of permanently burning her out, so perhaps this should be my last batch – until the next Easter season, of course.

I’ve decided that this is my year to try my hand at baked goods I’ve never experimented with before. Actually, I’ve meant to make hot cross buns for several years now, but it has long been our tradition to spend Easter in Texas, and invariably I will forget about hot cross buns until Easter is long-gone. Of course, I could make hot cross buns in May . . . but if you are going to make a seasonal specialty, it does seem more meaningful to abide by the imposed timeline.

As my years in England increase, I’ve noticed that my baking habits are skewing towards British traditions. There is ancient historical precedence for having hot cross buns at Easter – to the extent that Queen Elizabeth I had to pass a law limiting their production to the Christmas and Easter season. (Apparently they had a dangerous association with Catholicism, but we won’t get into that.) Anyway, that law must have been repealed a long time ago because now you can find hot cross buns on the shelves of any grocery store year-round.

When I was looking for a recipe, I checked Baking with Julia first – and was hugely surprised to discover that this authoritative tome had neglected in include hot cross buns in their offerings. The Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking book didn’t have a recipe for them, either. I did manage to find a rather simple recipe in my 1953 edition of Better Homes and Gardens, but I was a bit dubious about it. Adding some currants and a bit of cinnamon to plain roll dough wasn’t really what I was looking for . . . because surely there is more to it than that? From this sampling of American cookbooks, I think that we can infer that hot cross buns are not really part of the American baking canon. I did find a recipe in the King Arthur Whole Grains cookbook – but after trying it, I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it.

The first batch of hot cross buns I made came from a most beloved cookbook: Jane Brocket’s Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. If you are a fan of English storybooks and/or the traditions of English teatime, this book is a must-have. Jane cites Dan Lepard, a well-known English baker, as the source of her recipe – and I did think it gave a good result. It makes a sturdy bun – slightly spicy, not too sweet. Like all yeast rolls, these buns are best straight out of the oven. As soon as they cool, I freeze what we aren’t going to eat right away. A brief defrost, and then a 20 to 30 second zap in the microwave, will approximate the just-out-of-oven goodness. This batch served as breakfast for a week.

The one drawback of the Jane Brocket recipe is the overall time it takes. Brocket wants three different risings (I don’t mean to sound Biblical here): one for the sponge, one for the dough, and another for the shaped rolls. She mentions having these buns for “elevenses,” but I would have to stay up all night if I wanted to serve them any time before noon. At this time of the year our house is extremely cold. Even when I put my buns in the “hottest part of the house,” the airing cupboard, I still needed to double the amount of time required to get a good rise out of my dough.

Moving on to the next step in my hot cross bun journey: Nigella. I was surprised (again!) to discover that Nigella Lawson didn’t include a recipe for hot cross buns in her baking book: How to be a Domestic Goddess. Surely, surely, a domestic goddess makes her own hot cross buns? She does remedy this oversight in a later cookbook: Feast. I had thought that Nigella’s hot cross bun would prove to the favourite, and thus final batch, of the hot cross buns . . . but sadly, no. Despite a promisingly fragrant beginning, where you steep clove and cardamom in hot milk, her buns were oddly flat and tasteless. I actually did wonder if there were mistakes in the recipe – which does not call for sugar or salt! Nigella gets all fancy with the finishing touches: an egg wash, plus the flour/sugar crosses, plus a sugar glaze. Unfortunately, her buns were as hard as rocks the next day. She bakes them in a very hot oven, unlike the other recipes that I followed, and although they are beautifully burnished they just don’t hold up well.

Even with the favourite of the three recipes I tried, the one from Jane Brocket, I wanted a hot cross bun that was more meltingly tender. Finally, on my fourth go, I improvised.  Hey, I do the experimenting so you don't have to.  One batch of hot cross buns per Good Friday is probably enough.

Bee’s Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients:

2/3 cup milk
½ cup butter (4 ounces or one stick)
½ cup to 2/3 cup of sugar (depending on your sweet tooth)
zest of an orange and a lemon
1 package active dry yeast*
1 cup mixed dried fruit (raisins, currants, sultanas)
2 teaspoons mixed spice (or a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger if you don’t have this)
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
4 ½ to 5 cups of white bread flour

Method:

Just to be on the safe side, you may want to proof your yeast in a ¼ cup warm water and a teaspoon of sugar. You shouldn’t need to this with active yeast, but I got a better result when I did. * Next time I try this recipe I'm going to go with two packages of yeast, but I can't vouch for the end-result as I haven't tried it yet.

Then melt the butter into the milk over very low heat. While it was melting, I scraped off the zest from an orange and a lemon and threw it in the saucepan. When the mixture has cooled, and is only slightly warm, beat two eggs into it.

As the milk mixture is cooling, add the other ingredients into a large mixing bowl : 4 ½ cups of flour, the spices, the sugar, the salt and the dried fruit. Pour the liquid ingredients over the top and mix until well-incorporated. You may have to add a bit more flour – or conversely a bit more milk. The gluten in flour varies quite a lot and you need to go by feel. You want a soft dough that holds together, although it won’t make a ball shape; it shouldn’t be sticky, nor should it be dry. After being kneaded, it should feel silky. I kneaded it with my dough hook for about five minutes, without ever taking it out of my mixing bowl, but it is easy enough to do by hand. This kind of dough doesn’t need as much kneading as bread.

Lightly oil (or butter) your bowl and the top of your ball of dough. Cover with a damp tea towel and put in a warm place.* (The only warm place in my house is the airing cupboard.) It should rise until nearly doubled; this may take an hour, or it may take three hours. After your dough has risen, punch it down. (Please see the picture sequence.)

After the first rising, you will shape the dough into balls – approximately 3 ounces each – and place on a greased baking sheet. They should be “snug,” as Nigella says, but not touching. After they bake they will be touching, but you should be able to easily pull them apart. With a knife, score each bun with a cross. (If you wait to do this, you will press down too much on the dough after it has risen.) Cover your baking sheet with a tea towel and put the buns in a warm place for their second rising. Again, some recipes claim that this will happen in 45 minutes . . . but I found that two hours (or about the length of my yoga class, plus the drive back and forth) was just about right.

Before baking, you will have to do the last step: filling in the crosses. Without the crosses you’ve got nothing but spiced buns.

Make a paste of 3 tablespoons of flour, a tablespoon of sugar and approximately 2 tablespoons of water (maybe more). It should be smooth, thick, but not too thick. You can then pipe, syringe or merely ladle the paste into the indents of the cross.

my left-handed daughter demonstrates her technique

Bake for 25-30 minutes in a moderately high oven. 180C/375F. They should be golden brown, but be careful – the browner they get, the harder. Err on the light side of things.

Finally, when the buns are still warm, remove to a rack and glaze. If you boil a tablespoon of water with the same of sugar it will make a simple glaze to brush over the top. If you want something sweeter, you can make a simple frosting of icing sugar and milk.

It is not necessary to drink a cup of tea with a hot cross bun . . . but it is advisable.


The best way to reheat rolls is to place them in a plain paper bag, sprinkle the bag lightly with water, and place in a hot oven 3 to 5 minutes before serving.  (from the 1953 edition of "The Red Plaid Cookbook.")