Spiced apple and ginger wine loaf

Like most people who are blessed with apple trees in their garden I have been looking for new ways to use up the glut. There are only so many apple pies and crumbles that my family will eat and my freezers are full to bursting - last year was a very good year too and I suspect that there are many packs of stewed apple still to be unearthed.

I was very pleased then to see this recipe from Diana Henry for a cake which contains ginger wine, a favourite of my husband.

The cake was very easy to make. I didn't bother with the apple topping as my friend Suelle had not thought it added anything. And I didn't bother with the icing as I didn't have any icing sugar in the house. Next time it will be iced and I shall take on board Suelle's suggestion of adding a chopped apple to the batter as my husband didn't feel it was "appley" enough. However he loved the spicy, gingery taste and the texture.

Definitely a cake to go into my repertoire. Which is why I'm blogging about it because otherwise I shall forget all about it.

Hotslaw

Once again I find there has been a long gap since my last effort. The pressures at work have been unspeakably vile, I have been sleeping atrociously and seem to be functioning on a half empty brain.  Unlike some writers, probably most, I don't feel like writing when I am unhappy. And I don't much feel like cooking either. Add to that mix the fact that food costs have risen in a quite dramatic way and so I can't experiment as freely as I would like.

But yesterday Philippa had a barbecue for her friends to celebrate her 25th birthday which is tomorrow. This is an expensive time in the Lark household. My birthday follows Phil's - July 25th, then it's Taylor's on the 28th and Josh's on the 30th. But I digress.

I offered to do the puddings which, by request, were the usual suspects. And I said I would make a couple of salads because I have been itching to try Diana Henry's Hotslaw since reading the recipe in the Daily Telegraph some weeks back. Let me tell you this. It is sensational. I was bombarded with requests for the recipe and the guests were baying for more.



The one criticism came from my chilli-loving son-in-law who said it wasn't hot enough, so next time I will up the chillies and tabasco sauce.

Soy braised chicken thighs with star anise

Diana Henry is rapidly becoming my favourite food writer. I have made this recipe twice now and each time it has been absolutely delicious. My thighs don't look as pretty as hers though!



My friend Sue has made all 3 of the recipes in the article and she reports that they were all very good indeed.



Easy-peasy and very tasty indeed.

The cheek of it!

It is very unusual for me to try a new cut of meat, mainly because I am a curious and greedy eater and have had a stab at most things, with the exception of tripe which I really don't fancy. However, one of the latest "trendy" cheap cuts being lauded everywhere are pigs' cheeks.



I had seen this recipe from Diana Henry's new book in a recent Daily Mail feature, and I was tempted to try it the next time, or indeed if at any time, I saw these on a butcher's counter.



My friends at Waitrose obliged yesterday. And how. 7 pigs' cheeks came in at the princely sum of £1.64, and they weren't even Reduced To Clear. I was already impressed.




Lentils are a no go-area in this house. Chris won't try them because he had them once during the war, or some such nonsense. I prefer my mother's refusal to eat them. She was torpedoed coming back from Singapore at the beginning of World War 2 and spent some time in a POW camp where lentils were almost the only food available. She is not a fussy eater at all but cannot look a lentil in the eye, let alone eat one.



I varied the recipe slightly. The floured cheeks were fried with chopped celery and onion and then cooked very slowly in dry cider in the oven for 2 hours. I then added cream and Dijon mustard, reduced it a little and served it with pappardelle and peas.



A real triumph. They were gloriously moist and tender, a bit like a piggy version of shin of beef. Lovely, lovely, lovely.



But I bet they'd be even better with Puy lentils.