Gateau Grand Marnier from Mary and Vincent Price’s Treasury of Great Recipes

Gateau Grand Marnier from Mary and Vincent Price’s Treasury of Great Recipes… Joining the #TreasuryCookalong…. Varying a classic cake recipe with whole grain flours and kefir…  Contemplating how a global luxury brand treats its workers in Haiti…  Being relaxed as the cake breaks just before the photo for the blog…

After the fun of #Marguerite100 I thought I’d join in on the Vincent and Mary Price #TreasuryCookalong, a book that’s been a part of my life pretty much always.  My copy, which belonged to my mother, is a first printing of a 1965 classic reflecting a view of international restaurant cuisine that was most sophisticated in its day.  Nearly from the time I could read, I sat at Mom’s kitchen table looking through her cookbooks.

Creative, Political Baking. Introducing #politicakes

Croydon Citizens ‏@CroydonCitizens  Nov 3

The brilliant #LivingWage cake baked by students from @CroydonCollege to celebrate #LivingWageWeek

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I’ve decided when I see fun cakes-for-a-cause I’m going to post them with the hashtag #politicakes. Thanks to my dear daughter for that one! Hoping this will be inpiration for all of us.

I  do like this cake, photos of which I saw retweeted on Twitter:

Croydon Citizens ‏@CroydonCitizens  Nov 3

Mother Joyce: “if you cut the cake fairly there’s enough to go round” #LivingWage

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So far we have a #SavetheArctic Christmas cake and #axedrax pancakes.  If you see and better yet make a cake for a cause, please send it our way for documentation, hashtagization, etc.  Here’s the Pinterest page as well. Thank you!

The World’s Largest Welshcake

Had a small piece myself that day, and it was delicious.  And what an impressive griddle they’ve cobbled together there in the community garden.

This is the kind of lovely community event that happens around the small but bustling Saturday Market in Llanidloes, Powys, Mid-Wales. There are loads of friendly sellers and great stalls: baked goods, cheeses, vegetables, plants, vintage, charity and community set-ups, and my favourite, Jason, who sells quality “seconds” socks at discount prices. My feet have never been so happy, warmly clad in soft wool, since he has come to town.

Welshcakes are really nice to eat too, lightly warm with butter.  Here’s a recipe I plan to try one of these days.

A Great Apple Dessert: Squash and Quince Variations

Custardy Squash Prune Barberry Squares

Custardy Quince Squares

Gratitude to the culinary grace of cookery writer Dorie Greenspan for these wonderful Custardy Apple Squares. She writes that she sees the recipe in the link as a “back-pocket recipe.” In the few weeks this recipe has been in my life, I’ve come to consider it a “back-pack” for the ways that it can travel, light and flexibly, be adapted to ingredients on hand, rise to an attitude of perfection or laziness as befits one’s mood, and sit somewhere on a continuum of cake, tea time snack, and pudding (in the various British senses).  And it doesn’t seem to go wrong.

Nadia Wins Great British Bake Off 2015

Do you need a cathartic cry? Hooray for Nadia.  So many people so happy.

Here’s a timely and compelling Guardian “Comment is Free” piece: “Nadia Hussain has won so much more than the Great British Bake Off.  That an Asian Muslim woman in a headscarf can win a thoroughly British competition proves that ‘Britishness’ is broader than some would like to think.”

Nadia’s win feels especially great in light of Theresa May’s vitriol several days ago at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.  Saw this meme and chuckled:

Do not butter cream and bunting represent social cohesion?

Blackberry Apple Crumble: Not a Recipe

Would you call this performance a kind of Housewife Burlesque? I don’t know but I think she’s fabulous! Watch and tell us what you think.

“Everybody’s good at cooking something, I’m good at cooking Crumble.” Since May when Lorraine Bowen was on Britain’s Got Talent, my kids go around singing this song, so I sing it too now.  We all sing it–it’s catchy!

Here we have a large forage of end-of-September blackberries picked by husband and son.

And despite that it’s now October, there are still perhaps some bramble bushes fruiting in abundance.

Sweet Nettle and Sorrel Custard Rough Puff Tartlets

Sweet Nettle and Sorrel Custard Rough Puff Tartlets — what a mouthful for these novel, mouthful- size morsels, made from all good things… Inspired by Penelope Casas.

Crema De Espinacas en Canutillos:

“At the beginning of the [20th] century, this most unusual dessert of custard and spinach was popular in Bilbao; it continues to be featured at some of the city’s finest restaurants, either in a tart shell or as a filling for pastry horns,  It is said to be a vestige of the medieval custom of sweetening just about every kind of food imaginable….”

So wrote Penelope Casas in her truly exciting collection of regional Spanish recipes Delicioso!

Nettles are everywhere now, growing taller before our very eyes. The wonderfullest of weeds, the most delicious, nutritious and ubiquitous –why aren’t they the national food of Britain, as Frank Cook asks in this video.  Am just determined to use them as frequently and creatively as I can.

Intuitive Macaroons

Those cute Passover confections are not my creations. They were born in the kitchen of a friend whose creativity and active spiritual questioning manifest in her culinary arts.  I’m often trying to lure her into “guest blogging” here on KitchenCounterCulture, but this time I asked if I could do a post-from-afar in lieu of anything Pesach-related of my own… So here we have Macaroons for Passover in her unique but inspirational style of “Intuitive Cooking,” from which I have much to learn.  …And want to share with readers as well.  Thank you Jess!

Rachel de Thample’s “Five” — A Rave Review

Several years ago I began to ponder the internet recipe site of Abel and Cole, the major organic vegetable subscription service in the south of England.  There was was something so incredibly interesting, and original, light-handed yet educational and resourceful there, a joyful and free competence around food that felt rare and precious and kept pouring forth, anew.  Visit that site; it’s such a great resource for recipes (even though I’m more drawn these days to the idea of “freecipes,” there’s still lots to learn from reading them).

For people who cook, who take their cooking “practice” seriously, learning from others is enriching and serious business, and I make it a task to learn as part of my love of cookbooks, and prefer most of all writers with style and a unique way of going about the kitchen.

Recently I met the Abel and Cole food editor Rachel de Thample. She is in person everything her food seems to be: warm, fun, intelligent, committed to a better food system, creative, interesting…  So as a cookbook aficionado I was really excited to read her new book Five: 150 Effortless Ways to Eat 5+ Fruit and Veg a Day.   On the one hand this book is what the subtitle says, an effort to get us all eating the way we should.  On the other hand, and more excitingly, it’s a wonderful insight into an original cooking voice with lots to teach, inspire and entertain.

#axedrax Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday

Pancakes for Climate Justice!

On the one hand this video is a great demonstration of how to write messages or designs into your pancakes.  I wonder if the batter in the bottle is coloured with cocoa powder –or what makes it dark?

On the other, this video will hopefully travel around and help get the word out about the absolute dispiriting disgusting demoralising disgrace of biofuels subsidised as renewables and campaigning work against Drax as the largest power station in the world that runs on them (and coal!). Please share.

Biofuelwatch is an important resource for information and action against industrial biofuels as a false and dangerous solution to climate change.