Hot toddy

This was cobbled together from the contents of my cupboards, on a snowy Saturday evening. The ginger wine is unorthodox but it seemed appropriately warming; I used bitter orange instead of lemon because it's what I had, also because I thought it might be good.

(makes two)

~1/2 cup whiskey
~1/2 cup ginger wine
juice of one seville orange and ~5 strips of zest
1/2 tsp honey
~1/2 cup hot water
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 green cardamom pod

Put all ingredients in a small pan. Heat very gently until almost boiling. Strain through a sieve into a jug, pour into small mugs and sip.

Mulberry, cranberry, wheatberry, walnut

All these berries seemed so coincidental - the wheatberries, the dried berries, the pickled berries, even the berry molasses appeared just when I was about to get out the honey. I am gradually plundering my cupboardful of preserves - these juicy pickled mulberries were from the first harvest of last year. So, salad or grain, either way, this is nice.

1 cup wheatberries, cooked until tender in ~ 2 cups water
~1 tbsp white miso
~1 tbsp mulberry molasses
~2 tbsp mulberry vinegar (from the pickled mulberries, top up with red wine vinegar if you don't have enough)
~2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper
~20 pickled mulberries
~1/4 cup walnut pieces
~2 tbsp dried cranberries
~1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
~2 tsp cacao nibs (optional)

Put the wheatberries on to cook, and in the meantime prepare all the other ingredients. To make the dressing, whisk the miso, mulberry molasses, vinegar, olive oil and some salt and pepper together in a small bowl and taste to check balance. Put the cooked wheatberries in a serving bowl and add the dressing. Toss and let cool a little. Add the pickled mulberries, walnuts, cranberries, parsley and cacao, mix up and taste to check seasoning etc. Eat warm or cold.

Cabbage, watermelon radish and bitter orange salad

I couldn't resist marmalade orange season. But since I still have several jars of last year's marmalade in my preserve stash, I am trying to resist actually making marmalade. Instead, I thought I'd see what else I could come up with using bitter / Seville / marmalade oranges. We are out of lemons, so the idea of using bitter orange in salad instead seemed an interesting one. I was just reading about some Japanese citrus the other day - there's so many other kinds of citrus out there beyond lemon, lime, orange and even grapefruit. I knew yuzu, but there are all these other ones I'd never even heard of too. Anyway, I'd never used marmalade oranges for anything other than marmalade, so here's a starter foray into the world of alternative citrus.

1/3 of a small white cabbage, shredded
2 small watermelon radishes, peeled and finely sliced (or cut into matchsticks)
1/4 cup golden raisins
1-2 tbsp sesame seeds
1-2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
juice (and a little bit of zest) of half a bitter / Seville orange
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp white miso
pepper and salt

Put the prepared cabbage, watermelon radish, raisins, sesame seeds and coriander in a bowl. Put the orange juice and zest in a separate, small bowl, add the olive oil, miso and seasoning and check it tastes good. Just before serving tip the dressing over the salad and toss.

Avenotto aka savoury porridge

Is it the Scottish childhood? Who knows, but ever since I was the only one out of three sisters who ate porridge along with mama and papa bear and chattered about Goldilocks while pouring on the golden syrup... I have been a lover of oats.

I've never used them like this before - like a risotto, but with oats instead of rice as the grain - avenotto (? - I made that up). Seemed like you can't go wrong with oats.

1-2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tiny onion, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 cup oats
1 cup veg stock
1 cup boiling water mixed with 1 tsp mushroom powder
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1-2 leaves kale, washed and chopped
1-2 tbsp chopped parsley
salt, pepper, vinegar

Heat a medium saucepan and toast the sunflower seeds until golden and fragrant. Tip into a bowl. In the same pan, heat the oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook until almost soft. Add the mushrooms and saute until starting to crisp around the edges. Tip the onion, garlic and mushrooms into the bowl with the sunflower seeds. Put the oats in the pan and toast until slightly coloured and fragrant. Add the stock and boiling water-mushroom powder mix. Bring to a boil and add the dried herbs. Simmer until the oats are almost tender and the mixture has thickened (as for regular porridge). Add the kale and then cook until kale and oats are done. Add back in the sunflower seeds and onion-mushroom mixture, along with the parsley. Mix together, add salt and pepper and a splash of vinegar if you like, taste and add more if it needs it. Eat straight away.


Quick and good and digestible. Ha, so far today I had muesli (mostly unadulterated oats mixed with almond milk) for breakfast, this for lunch, and oat yoghurt for after lunch. What was I saying about oat love?

Celeriac pasta

We ate pasta with a creamy celeriac sauce at a place called Fressen in Toronto, years ago now (the restaurant has since been reinvented... but the celeriac sauce has survived on their menu). I didn't immediately realize quite how much S had fallen in love with it, but he had. So ever since we have been recreating versions - cooked celeriac, pureed and mixed through pasta. For this one, I cooked the celeriac just like this, before blending to a smooth puree.

1-2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 a medium celeriac, peeled and chopped into ~1 cm dice
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
salt+pepper
~2-3 tbsp fake milk (used almond)

enough dried pasta (twists or penne, used brown) for two people

Heat the oil in a medium, lidded saucepan then add the celeriac, garlic and thyme. Cover and cook for ~25 min, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile boil a big pan of salted water and get the pasta on. When the celeriac is tender, soft and a little sticky, take off the heat, taste and season, then transfer to a blender cup. Blend until smooth, adding fake milk to achieve the desired creamy pasta-sauce consistency. Taste to check seasoning. Drain the pasta when done, then return to the pan and toss with a little olive oil. Mix the celeriac sauce with the pasta and eat. If you like mix in chickpeas as well.


A good version. Happy to make pasta for S: he loves it so. The celeriac has a remarkable intense taste and creamy texture and this recipe brings both out beautifully while remaining simple, warming and satisfyingly comforting. Perhaps this celeriac sauce would make an interesting substitute for the white sauce in lasagne?

Orange, almond, cardamom, honey and polenta cake (gluten free)

It's my cake baking time of year again - both my lab cake making duty (for N, who is leaving this week, so probably the last time I will make one for him), and then S's birthday in a few weeks. Winter birthdays have their disadvantages but the enjoyment of time spent indoors baking on cold days is not one of them! N suggested nuts or fruit, so I decided to use both and make this.

This is a cake I haven't made for ages. My sister T used to make it, and I used to love it. I begged her for the recipe years ago, promptly lost, misplaced or forgot it. It took me a while to track down the source on the internet, but I am pretty sure I found it - Nigel Slater, here. I considered not adapting it, but couldn't help myself (/ had no butter and eggs in the house), so here is a veganised version. It is actually also gluten free.

For the cake:
220g refined coconut oil (or margarine)
220g sugar (for prettiness try and get golden caster)
100g slivered almonds (for prettiness use ones without skin)
200g ground almonds (for prettiness try and get blanched ones)
3 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 9 tbsp boiling water (for prettiness use golden flax)
150g polenta (optional for vegan version - add 1/4 tsp xanthan gum and 1/4 tsp turmeric to the polenta)
1 level tsp baking powder
finely grated zest and juice of a large orange
12 green cardamom pods

For the syrup:
Juice of 2 lemons
juice of 2 oranges
4 tbsp honey

For decoration:
1 whole orange, peeled neatly with a sharp knife and then sliced thinly

Line the base of the cake tin with a piece of baking parchment. Set the oven at 180C/360F.

Beat the coconut oil and sugar together til light and fluffy. Grind the slivered almonds in a blender til finely chopped, then add them, together with the ground almonds, to the cake mixture. Stir in the linseed-water mixture. Mix the polenta and baking powder, then fold into the cake mix, together with the grated orange zest and juice. Extract the black cardamom seeds (discard the green outer shells), grind them to a fine powder, then add to the cake mixture.

Transfer the cake mixture to the lined tin and smooth the top level. Bake for 30 minutes, turn down the heat to 160C/320F for a further 25 -30 minutes or until the cake is firm.

To make the syrup, squeeze the lemon and orange juice into a small saucepan, bring to the boil and dissolve in the honey. Keep the liquid boiling until it has formed a thin syrup (4-5 min). Spike holes into the top of the cake (still warm and in its tin) with a skewer (or thin knitting needle) then spoon over the hot citrus syrup.

Leave to almost cool, then lift out of the tin*. I decorated by arranging thinly sliced orange (1 whole large orange sliced into cross sections as neat and thin as I could manage with a sharp knife) on top.


*this was fairly unsuccessful - I had to leave paper and tin base stuck on for decorating and serving


This comes out dense and sticky and delicious. I suspect a little fat came out the base and burned on the bottom of the oven - prob a good idea to put it on a baking tray. Perhaps the cake could use a touch less coconut oil - could help with the sticking of the base as well as any leakage. Lining the sides and base with a continuous sheet of paper (or base+long strips) should also help with both sticking and leakage.

Sprout, watermelon radish and orange salad

An unusually bright, crisp and cheerful winter salad, inspired by the contents of the CSA.

1 punnet mixed salad sprouts
1 medium watermelon radish, peeled, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 large orange, pith and peel removed from the outside
1 tbsp white miso
1-2 tsp marmalade
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Put sprouts in a salad bowl. Slice the radish (it's so pretty!) and add to the bowl. Cut off as much peel and pith from the outside of the orange as you can, then cut out the segments, leaving behind the separating membranes. Add the orange segments to the bowl. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining orange into a small bowl, then add the remaining ingredients and whisk with a fork. Add the dressing to the bowl and toss. Eat right away.