In praise of the Baked Apple

Without fail around late autumn our neighbours give us a bucket of Bramley apples harvested from a tree in their garden. I was always jealous of this tree as a child and sometimes vaulted the fence to nick an apple or two; in our garden we had (and still possess) a gnarled, glorified stump of a pear tree that supports a tree house. No fruit has ever fallen from this tree apart from one year when it was clearly trying to die, dropping onto the vegetable patch all of four small, stumpy pears which were promptly scoffed by crows and the dog. Once a year with my bucket of cookers I’d set out to try a range of new, exciting, crumble, chutney or pie recipes I’d been hoarding since the summer but the baked apple only featured once in my repertoire. This was because the few I made were cooked in the microwave and were understandably disgusting. I mean look at them, they’re like the Elephant Man of desserts.

Happy Halloween Everybody!!

Sausage Mummies: roasted in ketchup and honey then wrapped in sourdough bandages

Sourdough Bones with Roasted Pumpkin and Chestnut Soup

Blueberry Cheesecake with White Chocolate Strawberry Ghosties

Our Pumpkins!

Çerkez tavuğu

Having sniffled and sweated my way through a particularly nasty cold, I celebrated my first day of feeling well with a trip to Manchester with Amy this week; we did a bit of window shopping, returned something hideous I’d bought and most importantly we dropped in to a Turkish restaurant at 205 Deansgate: Topkapi Palace. Apparently Roger’s been to the real deal on a school trip; alas, I am but a poor lout who’s never been to Turkey. I’d seen this place the week before on my way to the Museum of Science and Industry and noted how it actually had people sitting inside, as well as a decent lunch menu of £7.95 for two courses, so we decided to give it a try.

Dogs n’ Dough, Manchester

Now that I’m based back in West Yorkshire, Manchester is only a half hour train ride away, rather than a two-hour trek. Exhausting all the restaurant options in York really made me feel like it was time to be moving on and Manchester, with its seemingly endless eatery options really gets me excited. I get the sense that the city cares about its food; Simon Rogan's The French narrowly missed out on a Michelin star this year but has raised the bar pretty high, and there's enough money knocking about to warrant some pretty good cocktail bars. If I had the money I know where I’d spend it. But I don’t have the money. And as for drinks, the 10.30 curfew of the last-train-home doesn’t really give me the option for a night on the tiles, nor am I an afternoon cocktail person.

"Spanish" Paella

Not having set foot on Spanish soil, my experience of paella so far hasn’t been that great. A market stall in northern France does shine through in my memory; heaving with onlookers all ogling a steaming pan the width of a double bed, we fought our way through the crowd for a family-size portion of the stuff, studded with spindly langoustines, peppers and tomatoes. But of course that was good; I was ten for god’s sake and it was the holidays!

Chinese-style Pork Buns

When I was small we used to drive to Manchester and stop off at a little bakery up some steps in Chinatown. Inside there were glass-fronted displays of all kinds of sweet and savoury soft doughy buns, glazed and shining. We always bought something sweet with bean paste in it, which got thrown out after we’d taken one bite each in the back of the car but the star of our purchases was always the pork buns. The dough itself was sweet and pillowy soft but that filling! Tender roasted pork with honey and five spice. I didn’t know what char siu was back then but now I try to recreate those flavours every time I’m out of ideas with a piece of pork sitting in front of me. This time around I had a few pieces of pork belly to use up, so I felt that the time was upon me to try and recreate my Manchester favourite.

Red Lentil Dahl

Everyone has at least one emergency recipe in their arsenal, even if it’s just frozen chips with cheese. When the cupboards are bare and it’s lunchtime, this is the one that I fall back on time and time again. It’s based on a recipe I saw a few years back in The Guardian by Yotam Ottolenghi (before he was famous, yeah?). Lots of budget foodstuffs like pigs ears and oxtails have recently been picked up by celebrity chefs and so thrown off their uncool reputations. Lentils, on the other hand, still bring to mind images of dingy 1970s bedsits and hippies. I’m not going to fight for their cause but I do always have some in the cupboard and they taste great in spicy soups or as sloppy rainy day meals like this! I make this recipe by memory and according to what doesn’t have a thin layer of mould on it in the fridge; the results are always slightly different but still tasty.