Before we proceed with the memery, though, and speaking of trying new things, here's something new I tried back in Week 2 but forgot about when making that week's list: a Marmalade Pudding Cake from Nigella Lawson.
My friend Rachel, who is an excellent cook and consummate hostess (I can cook but am less good at the hostess part, usually being caught when guests arrive running around in a panic with flour in my hair, but that's a subject for another post), often invites us round for dinner and, to contribute to the occasion, I sometimes volunteer to bring dessert. This requires both some bravery and some foolishness -- bravery on the part of the other guests, and foolishness on my part, because I am Not Very Good at desserts. I think this is because these days, I'm just not that into sweets: when browsing a restaurant menu, it's always the tasty-sounding main dishes or even more interesting starters that catch my eye, and at choose-your-own-adventure restaurants, I'd almost always rather have another bite of savoury food than dessert. When I was younger I used to be a real sugar-head, and my passion for desserts made me correspondingly better and more inspired when it came to making them; nowadays I feel I've somewhat lost my touch.
So, the day of a dinner usually finds me wondering what on earth I can make for dessert, and frantically scanning cookbooks and food websites for ideas. (That is, when I remember at all: there have been occasions when I've invited people around for dinner and suddenly realised half an hour before they arrive that I've entirely forgotten about afters! Luckily Tesco is just round the corner, their ready-made puddings aren't so bad, and my friends are generously forgiving...) This time I knew I wanted something classic, comforting and easy to make: proper puddingy, in other words. And who better to turn to for such a thing than Nigella?
An added bonus of this recipe was that I didn't even have to leave the house to buy any extra ingredients. I only needed it to serve 4 rather than 8, it had to be transportable by bus (let's not talk about the Great Bike Bag Cheesecake Pie Catastrophe), I only had SR flour rather than plain, and I didn't have a suitably sized baking dish, but what would a recipe be without some modifications? The amount of leftover marmalade in the jar in the fridge was just right to make a cut-down version suitable for a loaf tin. I used a bit of brandy in the glaze along with the marmalade and juice, transported it separately in a jar and poured it over before reheating for about 15 minutes in the oven, which was still warm from the divinely tender and delicious roasted shoulder of lamb we enjoyed for our main course.
Nigella's Marmalade Pudding Cake, adapted by me
1/4 cup plus 1 tbs caster sugar and light brown sugar, mixed*
125g butter
1/4 of a (1lb) jar of marmalade, divided 2:1
1 scant cup self-raising flour
2 eggs
zest of 1 orange, juice of half (eat the other unjuiced half!)
1-2 tbs brandy
Preheat oven to 160C. Cream butter and sugar together until smooth and fluffy; beat in marmalade and half of orange zest; stir in flour, then beaten eggs (or just crack them into the bowl and whisk them about a bit before mixing them in with the rest) and juice from 1/4 of the orange. Spoon into loaf tin, spreading out evenly, and bake for about 30-40 minutes until top just springs back when lightly pressed.
Meanwhile make glaze: combine remaining marmalade, juice from another 1/4 of the orange and brandy in a small bowl (or, if you are using up the last of the marmalade, directly in the jar!) and microwave for a minute or two until heated. Stir until smooth, heating a little more as required.
(Optional extra step: As soon as loaf tin is cool enough to handle -- since you're already running late but you really don't want it to melt through the bottom of your carrier bag -- wrap tin in foil, put lid on jar of glaze, pack both hastily but carefully into bag along with a carton of custard, and take on bus to Didsbury! Receive curious and somewhat envious looks from fellow passengers as cakey orangey fragrance wafts throughout bus.)
When ready to serve, pour glaze over cake in tin and return to oven for a few minutes or until warmed through. Eat with custard, scraping all the last bits of caramelised orange glaze and crumbs from around the edge of the tin.
* Measuring out 37.5g of each kind of sugar seemed like way too much trouble! I filled the 1/4 cup measure about 2/3 full with brown sugar, poured in caster sugar to the brim, then added an extra tablespoon of caster sugar. Good enough.
And now, the meme!
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (once, in Paris; delicious but oh-so-rich)
5. Crocodile (a few times, including at an open-air dinner under the stars in the Central Australian desert)
6. Black pudding (whenever I share a cooked breakfast with Lee, who doesn't like it)
7. Cheese fondue (Best hangover cure ever: Emmental fondue, one morning after the night before in Switzerland)
8. Carp (once or twice at Chinese restaurants. Not as nice as barramundi.)
9. Borscht (First time, made with tinned pickled beetroot as part of choir camp catering. Second time, at high-end restaurant in St Petersburg. Needless to say the second was much better! I've enjoyed it many times since.)
10. Baba ghanoush (Oh yes. See here for one of my many I-love-eggplant stories.)
11. Calamari (What would life be without salt'n'pepper squid? I know, squid =/= calamari, not exactly, but I've had -- and love -- both.)
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (it's the experience, not the taste: Gray's Papaya in New York)
16. Epoisses (at very French, very nice restaurant that I was lucky enough to be taken to in Leeds)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (Our ex-barmaid Angie makes her own wine from all manner of things; the blackcurrant one was particularly nice. And now so do we: strawberry in the cellar, elderflower and black cherry on the go -- but they are from kits, so slightly cheating.)
19. Steamed pork buns (What kid doesn't love char siu pao?)
20. Pistachio ice cream (My favourite gelateria anywhere: Gelatomassi, on Sydney's King St)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (In Australia, blackberries are an introduced weed and are often sprayed with pesticides, meaning you never know whether the berries you stumble across are safe to eat. Here you can pick them right off the brambles and put them straight in your mouth. I last did this at Trefor Pier, standing in my drysuit!)
23. Foie gras (my ex-downstairs neighbours made a fabulous Christmas dinner with foie gras to start and then roast goose. Amazing.)
24. Rice and beans (obviously I've eaten rice, and I've eaten beans, and I've sometimes eaten them together, but the proper Southern rice'n'beans is something I have yet to taste. EDIT: oh wait, I just read the Wiki article in the link; if we're talking about the South American generic rice-served-with-beans as part of staple diet, Chef Olga served this up pretty much every other day at the Payamino research station. So yes, I've had rice and beans!)
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (My friend Kim's Colombian housemate introduced us to a dessert called Romeo and Juliet: dulce de leche, which she made by boiling an unopened can of condensed milk, spread onto slices of sharp cheese. Sounds odd, tastes incredible!)
28. Oysters (most recently just this week, when I steamed up a few leftover oysters with ginger and spring onion sauce)
29. Baklava (I miss the baklava shops on Sydney Rd, and the cheese pies from A1 Bakery.)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (chowder yes, in Boston; sourdough bowl no -- it came with oyster crackers. Which don't seem to have anything to do with oysters.)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (No. Ugh. But perhaps I should try one?)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (There have been requests for my 'eggcup scones' on this year's canal boat trip. I never used to be any good at scones but clearly, I have improved!)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (I refuse to call it Jell-O.)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (and also curried goat brains, courtesy of my friend Lusty Will)
42. Whole insects (in China, where else?)
43. Phaal (Never heard of this before but now really want to try it!)
44. Goat’s milk (My sister was 'diagnosed' by a naturopath as being allergic to cow's milk, when we were kids, and she had to drink goat's milk and soy instead. Later, tests revealed she was even more allergic to soy!)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (it was on my must-do list for my first ever trip to Japan last year. Somewhat underwhelming but I survived and can say I've tried it!)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (Unagi-don, how I love thee...)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (Japanese plump orange uni is delicious, but I'll always remember with fondness eating freshly opened 'erizos del mar' from the top of a barrel outside a little delicatessen in Cadiz. The fishermen had just brought in that day's haul, a bagful of spiky black urchins, and when we indicated our interest in trying them, they pulled out a half-dozen and opened them on the spot with a knife. The proprietor brought out teaspoons and they showed us how to scoop the tiny, delicate sliver of purplish roe from the inside of the shell to our mouths. A true 'spirit of place' moment and a taste to remember it by.)
51. Prickly pear? (I'm actually not sure if I've had genuine prickly pear. I've eaten cactus leaves and I have a bottle of prickly pear liqueur from Malta on my shelf -- pink, slightly tart, slightly sweet. One to check and try again.)
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (Belgium, where else? Maredsous 10% is my favourite; I think we tried one at about 16%!)
59. Poutine (On the list for planned trip to Canada this year -- though I think I'm going to the wrong side)
60. Carob chips (Along with naturopathy, my family was into health foods when I was younger...)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (First as 'Spanish donuts' from the van that used to park out the back of the Vic Markets in Melbourne; then 'con chocolate' on my first visit to Spain -- Valencia, in 2005 -- and subsequently!)
68. Haggis (A few times, on Burns Nights and sometimes with breakfast, as during my trip to Edinburgh last week. The first time I went to Edinburgh I was too scared to try the deep-fried haggis from the Cowgate chip shop but I'm determined to get round to it at some point!)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe (first time, in Prague, in a tiny and wonderful bar where we spent hours drinking, nibbling and entertaining the waiters by trying to speak Czech, and that we've never been able to find again...)
74. Gjetost, or brunost (On a sandwich last year in Oslo.)
75.
76. Baijiu (Er-guo-tou translates loosely as "two-pot-head". This apparently derives from the distillation process, not the effects the morning after, but you could have fooled me...)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (I don't know where to get these here but will look out for them on my next US trip. I've had a Twinkie -- does that count?)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (Lee calls this "BBQ tea". It's the closest I get to having a cigarette.)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum (at Thai restaurants, in Thailand, and now at home)
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I wish! On the list...)
85. Kobe beef (in Kobe, no less)
86. Hare (I've had rabbit; don't think I've had hare)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (We discovered an incredible basement food-hall deli at one of the department stores in Helsinki and loaded up with all sorts of wonderful goodies. The fresh seafood was awesome but we also sampled a sort of bastourma/bresaola-type thing made from horsemeat. And reindeer pie!)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox (the first thing I ordered when I got to New York; a little disappointed to find it was just a form of smoked salmon)
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake
I make that 23 or 24 (I clearly can't count!) new things on this list for me to try. I shall be on the alert for opportunities!
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