A fig roll for my Jewish Vikings

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I found the breakfastboys in the hall this morning doing battle with a toy guitar and a plastic sword.'It's OK, mummy, we're fighting because we're Jewish Vikings' they informed me, before parrying off down the hallway and round the corner. My roots are in the West Highlands and the North East of Scotland, and my name suggests my roots are quite likely to be with the Vikings. In fact, if you saw the oldest breakfastboy you'd probably put money on it. Apparently though, just about everyone with vaguely Scandinavian looks likes to think they are a Viking, and people are always terribly disappointed when their DNA tests inform them that they are in fact not Vikings at all. So, who knows. Meanwhile, MrB's gang on his mum's side are Eastern European Jews. So, for my little Jewish Vikings, I decided to make some Challah with a twist (don't worry, it's not herring, not even soused herring) - my first attempt at a plaited bread. Also my first attempt at Challah.

Challah (or Chollah, or Hallah) is a celebration bread, and that seemed apt, as it was International Women's Day, so what better way to celebrate MrB's female line than a loaf of sweet honeyed and egged bread to tear apart and share. The plaits represent love, with all those entwined arms, so it's also perfect to eat with your loved ones. Say on Mothers' Day. Say.

So, to the twist. I saw this recipe in Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. You may know her blog about cooking in her New York kitchen, and now her cookbook is out in the UK. I've already made a couple of things from it and so far, they've all been hits.The black bean ragout smelled gorgeous all day as it was cooking in the slow cooker. I presented it to the breakfastboys with some trepidation - you know, vegetables, black, etc etc, but the eldest at least wolfed it down and even smallest BB managed a few mouthfuls.

Anyway, this is a challah whose ropes are filled with a paste made from figs and oranges. Not being Jewish myself, I have no qualms about messing with the traditional challah, and I love any kind of fruity bread. The orangy figginess is a real winner here. The link above will take you to the recipe on the blog. I was a bit anxious about the plaiting, but it wasn't nearly as hard as it looked in the pictures, and the fact that I managed to tear a couple of the ropes a bit didn't lead to major disaster either.

Although figs are most definitnely not a Viking kinda fruit (although apparently they got as far south as North Africa in their roamings, so perhaps they were partial to a fig or two), the act of rolling the paste into the bread dough put me in mind of those fig roll biscuits that we ate as kids. Yum. I managed to squash it a bit by turning it upside down in the oven at the end to make sure the bottom was cooked, so the plaits are not as impressive as they were when it went into the oven. But I'm still pleased with the result. It smells divine and tastes great too.

The figgy paste could be used in lots of other things I think - buns and possibly biscuits of some sort - the recollection of fig roll biscuits makes me wonder about some sort of figgy shortbready thing. Will have to put my thinking cap on.

Deb Perelman says that any leftovers make great French toast, but I'm thinking that a suitably Viking (or at least British) take on that might be to use the leftovers to make a bread and butter pudding. What do you think? Orangy, figgy, bread and butter pud with a nice creamy custard, perhaps with a hint of orange too. What's not to like there? That will of course, require us to not eat the whole lot before I get to that point, so don't hold your breath. I'll be back with a recipe if I get that far...

Farmhouse Breakfast Week Day #3

Today I thought I'd share my default breakfast. This is the breakfast I have most mornings. Despite appearances, I do not in fact spend every evening up to my elbows in bread flour, or lovingly composing home-made granola. This is a very quick, and not really home-made sort of a breakfast, but it's still very good, and very good for you. I started on this when I was trying to lose a bit of weight. It's not exactly low-calorie; it's more of a portion size thing - you don't need much of it to fill you up, and it keeps me going until lunchtime.

So, here it is: rye bread - the pumpernickel kind you buy in a dense brick that is pre-sliced into long thin slices. It keeps for ages unopened, and lasts a week opened, so I pick one up with the weekly shop. My favourite is an organic one with sunflower seeds that I get from Sainsburys. I keep meaning to try making my own, but I haven't got around to it yet - watch this space! I like it toasted, then a scraping of butter, some honey and a banana sliced on top. And that's it.

Not a great deal of vitamin C going on there though, and at this time of year I definitely need a bit of a vitamin boost to get me going in the morning, so I decided to inject a bit of zing into the day with a smoothie as well. I have some lovely pink forced rhubarb in my fridge. Rhubarb smoothie? Sounds weird, but if Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says go for it, well, who am I to object? I added a few frozen raspberries to this, mostly in an effort to cool the rhubarb mixture a little more quickly, but otherwise the  recipe is as in the link above. It's good, and most definitely an improvement, aesthetically speaking, on MrB's super-smoothie. Look at that lovely orangy-pink pastel. Like a winter morning sky.

Note to self: I really must buy some more photogenic plates. Everyone else's blogs have lovely chintzy florals or willow patterns, and my bog standard Denbys are looking a bit institutional in all these pictures. They are actually rather nice in RL, all blue on the outside, but the photos are really not doing them, or my cooking, (or in this instance, my 'cooking') justice. I feel a charity shop mission coming on.

I'm having a day at the stove today, so new treats to come tomorrow!

Post-Christmas fruity breakfast - an update via my mum

So, my mum emails me to tell me I got it all wrong. That fruit salad was not the fruit salad she made at all. She has however, sent me corrections, and here is her original recipe, which is, I think, an improvement on my rather slapdash 'recipe'. It turns out there are limes. And blood oranges. Who knew? But even better for this time of year with all its lovely citrus fruit.

2 limes

4oz sugar (think I used a little less) 

2 pink grapefruit

3-4 blood oranges

450g fresh or tinned lychees   

Peel the limes very thinly, place the peel, sugar and 250ml water in saucepan and bring to boil, take off heat and leave to infuse for 15 mins.  Remove the peel and add the juice of the limes to the syrup. Peel and segment the grapefruit and oranges, removing pith and skin.  Drain the tinned lychees, mix fruit together and pour over syrup.  Serve hot or cold.

Mum says that as well as breakfast, it is also pretty darn good after a hot curry.

Deliciousness squared. With thanks to my lovely mum and her vast recipe store.

Disaster management

OK, so it's not quite Superstorm Sandy, but I have an embarrassment of rhubarb. My lovely neighbour arrived at my door with carrier bags full of rhubarb from her mother's garden a couple of months ago. I'm not sure if her mother lives on a rhubarb farm, but there were pounds and pounds of it. I made some jam, and a couple of crumbles, which didn't make much of a dent in it, so I froze the rest and have since been pondering what to do with it. I'd decided on some orange and rhubarb jelly (by 'jelly', I mean jam without lumpy bits in) so yesterday I got out the jelly bag and cooked up the rhubarb and squeezed orange juice, but after hours of straining there wasn't enough juice to make the jelly, so I was left with a small bowlful of rather pretty orange goop. What to do?

Well, if there is a thing I like more than jam on nice white bread, it's lemon curd. I know you can make orange curd, so how about rhubarb and orange curd? The best curds are made with the sharpest fruits - the more powerful citrus fruits in particular. Well, it was worth a try. I didn't have a recipe,  but I found one for gooseberry curd in Marguerite Patten's Jams, Preserves and Chutneys, and used that as a basis for this. In my own personal in-my-head fruit classification system, rhubarb and gooseberries are quite closely related (and yes, greengrocery pedants, I know rhubarb is a vegetable, but of course it's actually a fruit in my head). They share a tartness and need quite a lot of sugar to make them palatable. *Nostalgia alert*. When I was a child, we used to eat sticks of raw rhubarb, which we would dunk in a bowl of sugar before each bite. Yeurch.

So, here we have it, my on-the-fly rhubarb and orange curd. This quantity made 3 jars. You might find that your rhubarb gives a bit more juice and makes a bit more curd. My rhubarb was cut very late in the season and had also been frozen, so I think it was probably a bit drier than it would have been with younger, fresher fruit. See notes on quantities below:

Breakfast lady's rhubarb and orange curd

900g rhubarb, washed, end bits chopped off and then cut into chunks
zest and juice of 3 large oranges
1 tbs lemon juice
225g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
55g unsalted butter

Notes: You need about 300ml juice in total. Make up the difference with more squeezed orange juice or a bit more lemon juice if necessary. If you have more, the quantities should be 450g sugar, 3 large eggs  and  115g butter to every 600ml juice.

I have a bottle of ginger extract in the cupbaord and I was tempted to add a little to see what happened, but decided against it in the end. As I still have pounds of rhubarb, I might try it next time. I'll let you know if it works.

1. Put the rhubarb, orange zest and juice and lemon juice in a pan and simmer gently until you have a thick puree. Try not to cook it for too long, so as not to evaporate too much juice. You could use a pan lid to keep in the moisture and just give it an occasional stir.

2. Rub the resulting puree through a nylon sieve, and discard any remaining pulp. I had already put mine through a jelly bag at this stage, but there is no need to do this.

3. Put the puree into a heatproof bowl, along with the butter and sugar and place the bowl over a pan of hot water. Gently simmer until the butter melts and the sugar has dissolved.

4. Beat the eggs and then add (make sure the mixture isn't too hot at this stage - you don't want the eggs to cook as soon as they hit the mixture or you'll end up with eggy lumps). Mix thoroughly and then cook gently until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

5. Pour into sterilized jars, seal. Or eat. Because of the eggs, it won't keep as long as jam. But that's not going to be a problem in this house...

Boy, it's good. The tang of the fruits with the rich creaminess of the butter and eggs. Scrummy. Lovely on toast or soft white bread. But the great thing about curd is that it can be used in all sorts of other things:

• pancakes
• meringues sandwiched with cream and curd (though possibly not for breakfast...)
• as a middle for sponge cakes and swiss rolls
• add a dollop inside an American muffin. Use a basic muffin recipe, spoon the mix into cases until half full,then add a spoonful of curd and top up the cases with muffin mixture and cook as normal.

Alternatively, just get a spoon.