Since I was kid I liked sour and spice, I don’t have any memories of wanting ice cream or chocolate but most definitely wanting spicy pickle. I guess now I appreciate deserts more purely because of the joy they seem to bring to people’s faces and the construction involved in making them.
I have two ways of cooking. One haphazard that’s when I am putting something together with familiar flavours and cooking techniques. I think my palette in regards of balancing spice with sour and umami is more natural than just balancing levels of sweet.
The second way of cooking which I enjoy just as much is following a recipe precisely and this is important for desserts. The joy of following written word and then seeing the dish turn out the way it should is pretty liberating. It also helps me improve my skills and makes me appreciate cookery writing more. In a very boring mundane legal world of mine, recipes are sort of like legislation, if read correctly, followed exactly – the result is fruitful (mostly). However, there will be always be little niches which you may miss and those which each of us will interpret differently.
Enough chat. Below are two dessert recipes one a Classic Crème Caramel and then Busbusa (an Arabic/Middle-eastern semolina and coconut cake). Classic Crème Caramel
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp water 150ml milk 275ml single cream 4 large eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 40g soft brown sugar
Method - Put the Caster sugar in a pan over medium heat and let it melt. Please do not stir as it will crystallise. See it turn from a frothy white to a very deep brown. - Once it starts to melt add two table spoons of water, at this point keeping it on a gentle heat, swirl this all around - Once this starts to form into a luscious brown liquid, pour it onto the dish in which you will set the crème caramel. - In the same pan, because there is no time to use an extra pan, pour in the milk and cream and bring to a gentle simmer. - In another bowl whisk together the four eggs & brown sugar & vanilla. - Now pour the milk mixture onto the egg mixture and mix thoroughly and you should have a cream coloured thick liquid. - Now pour this liquid on to the caramel in your dish and put the dish in a baking tray. - Pour cold water on in this tray, this allows for a slower bake. - Bake for around 1 hour at 180’C. - Once baked, cool in fridge for a few hours. - And now is the moment to turn it over. Take it out the fridge and loosen the edges with a knife and do a one momentum flip
And that’s it! It seems long and its time consuming, but its quite rewarding seeing its shiny self come to life. Basbousa As with most new things I cook, I normally have an ingredient and I want to make something new out of it. This time the ingredient was semolina and so I went on a search for semolina cakes and found this wonder. A middle eastern semolina and coconut cake.
Ingredients
The Cake
2.5 cups of semolina
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup caster sugar
½ cup self raising flour
200g butter
1 cup Greek yogurt
1tsp vanilla extract
Pistachios and cashews for garnish
Syrup
1.5 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp rosewater
Method
- Preheat oven to 190’C
- First cream the butter and sugar.
- Now add all the other ingredients
- You can mix by spoon but because this almost forms like a dough like mixture, mix with
hands for ease.
- Now spread this mixture evenly in a baking tray and then using a knife cut diagonally
across the whole thing so you make the mixture into small diamond shapes. Make sure you
run the knife the whole way through.
- Now onto each diamond press on a cashew and bake for 40 minutes.
- As for the syrup, on a very gentle heat with no stirring at all, melt together the sugar and
water and towards the end add the lemon juice and rose water.
- Once the cake is baked, pour this syrup onto it while its hot so the semolina soaks it all.
And that’s all!
I want to be able to cook a range of different foods from different cultures and be ready to deal with any course and so cooking isn’t just about what you like to eat, its about cooking for others and also improving your skill as a cook and these two dishes help do that! There’s been a lot of dessert chat so here is some very lovely freshly grilled squid I had in Portugal on a sunny November afternoon post surfing and next to it a “Aloo Puri” breakfast I made for my mother on a Sunday.
Shanzé
