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| Xanthe Clay's Spanish Canas. Photograph by Tara Fisher from The Contented Cook, Kyle Books |
I spent yesterday packaging vanilla powder for the vanilla gift swap. The smell takes me straight back to Uganda and the Ndali processing house. I realised that I couldn't take everyone I knew to Uganda .. but I could bring something back here instead. I am so excited about the vanilla gift swap and I love bringing twitter and blogging into real life. Seeing people laughing and suddenly meeting someone who they've been chatting with for months in person is just such fun and I have been busy making sweet yellow plums into french soft set jam with just a whisper of that seductive vanilla in it.
It is my favorite time of year. There is bright
September sunshine outside and the glory of summer has faded. Occasionally I almost forget that we
haven’t really had a summer. The only things that did well in my garden this
year have been the herbs, the strawberries and the salad. The rest has suffered with the
whether. Now the vegetable garden
needs tending to and my house needs a good tidy after the summer holidays. I suppose an untidy house is to be
expected with three children vs one working mother. Never doubt that behind the
scenes of domestic bliss I am peddling like mad to keep afloat.
Last night my husband lit the first fire. Walking across
the garden wafts of pine wood smoke drifted. It is autumn and an evening indulging in new
cookery books promised. With the
chickens shut away, and the days freshly laid eggs collected I curled up on the
sofa to read some of the books that have landed on my doormat in the past few
weeks. I have to admit that I feel a little guilty at indulging when there is so much to do, nevertheless
I read on, listening to the fire crackle.
Food writer and Telegraph journalist Xanthe Clay's new book The Contented Cook is exactly the kind of book I can just lose myself in. The photographs are just beautiful, and
the recipes are practical. For someone who has many cookbooks I find often find myself
lost in deciding what to cook, but not with this one. I wanted to cook everything. You
see the recipes in the book are practical in every sense of the word. They are as you would expect from
Xanthe well thought out and in a sensible order, but there is more than
that. It’s classily perfectly
written to make me feel I can and will cook from it. I earmark the Hot and Sour
Noodle Soup, the Squishy Almond cake and the Pan-fried Onglet with Fennel Seed
Roast Potatoes.
As I read I am romanced. Recipes have an almost therapeutic effect on me and I find myself thinking that I need to remember that my children will not look back on
their childhood and marvel at how clean the kitchen floor used to be… or how tidy the
sitting room was. They will
remember the smells of baking, the laughter as we sit at the table and the
feeling of warmth as they come home from school with their pockets full of
conkers and the treats they ate whilst swapping stories about their day. So I shall make the
Spanish Canas for the children this evening and I’ve invited friends for
supper later in the week so I’ve ordered the Onglet from my local butcher.
As the fire glows I wonder how perfect moments happen. They are like dreams hard to pin down
and impossible rarely but somehow
whenever they do there always seems to be food about and there is contentment wherever there is food, and so the
title Xanthes book rings so true.
Here is the recipe for Xanthe’s Cañas
Cañas
The Spanish chef and
restaurateur José Pizarro’s parents, whom I was lucky enough to meet, are both
in their seventies and still tend a smallholding of 20 hectares. Señora Pizarro
fed me on her homemade cañas, crisp curls of flaky cinnamon-scented
pastry, which melt richly in the mouth. Gorgeous with coffee or the hot
chocolate on page 207.
Makes about 20
125ml olive oil, plus extra
for deep-frying
Zest of ½ orange
375g plain flour
125ml white wine
125g caster sugar mixed with 1
tablespoon ground cinnamon
Heat the oil and the orange
zest gently in a small pan for 5 minutes.
Put the flour in a large bowl
and make a well in the middle. Pour in the hot oil and stir to mix. Add the
white wine and mix again. Knead the dough lightly to make a soft, silky, but
not sticky dough.
Roll out the dough to a
thickness of about 3mm. Cut it in strips 15cm long and 4cm wide.
Heat oil in a pan or wok to a
depth of about 5cm (ensure the pan is no more than half full) to 185°C or until
a scrap of the dough browns in about 1½ minutes.
Take a cream horn mould or a
12cm length of stainless steel tube, about 3cm in diameter and wrap a strip of
dough around it in a spiral. Put the whole wrapped mould into the hot oil and
allow to sizzle for 10 seconds, or until the dough has stiffened and turned
pale. With tongs, carefully pull out the metal mould, allowing the spiral of
dough to slide back into the oil. Cook for a further minute or so until deep
golden.
Carefully lift the spiral out
of the oil and drain on kitchen paper. While still warm, dust with the sugar
and cinnamon mixture. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
Please note that the both recipe
and photograph shown have been reproduced with full permission from the
publisher.
