The morning washed the honey from the sky

I think it's likely that we all have ideas ricocheting between the walls of our skulls that require a small push to bring into fruition, almost as if we're waiting for some kind of divinely ordained permission to proceed. Things, big or small, that are by no means impossible, but need a kick to push out the inertia that keeps us from taking action. It will not surprise you that many of my own thoughts on the matter are food-related. Some get written down in a red notebook that was gifted to me by friend-of-the-blog Keith back in January (it will likely be the first and only notebook that I completely fill with writing), some are consigned to the ether whereby their potential resurfacing is mired in uncertainty.

Guys, I'm not fucking around here, all this cognitive pirouetting was catalysed by a tub of cake spread which was acquired by my household. In the lobby of my building, a communal box has been established where residents can put in any spare essentials that they may have, which can go towards anyone who may be running short. This box has, so far, been a mixture of primarily necessities burnished with just a peppering of grocery-based esoterica. This has included cans of Guinness stout, bottles of peach-flavoured sparkling water and, case in point, tubs of Betty Crocker coffee flavoured buttercream. I'm not sure what led someone to have two spare containers of this stuff, but I'm going to let myself think that the veritable Ms. Crocker herself lives somewhere within the building.

If you hadn't already assumed so, we did indeed take the tub of coffee buttercream with us. I am aware that it is apparently disgraceful to use and enjoy store-bought buttercream, but we all ate spoonfuls from the tub and were won over; even Rebecca who doesn't like coffee. Owen was so inspired by this experience that he resolved to make a carrot cake, a pretty significant development given that he's not that much of a cake fan. Spoiler alert: he did a cracking job, and the discarded buttercream finally found it's purpose in life. My single role in producing the cake, grating the carrots, did make me reflect on how the carrot cake formula can be changed up. I know, having the chutzpah to question to perfect balance in play here is an act of supreme arrogance, but do bear with me.

The main question in my head was "what if I were to replace the grated carrots with parsnip?" That night, I tried to consciously go to bed earlier than I usually do, so at about half-eleven, I found myself laying in bed, drifting off to sleep with the seeds of an idea ready to germinate. I slept peacefully for a grand total of two hours, before resurfacing once again. I tried reading a book for a bit, but to no avail. It seemed like the night had opened itself up, and I had to find a way to occupy myself until morning. Obviously, a night of disrupted sleep is far from ideal, but it gave me a space of time where my idea was still fresh. Otherwise it could have easily just melted away like so many others. Small digression, could you imagine if, at the end of our lives, we could visit an archive full of the ideas we had dreamed up and forgotten? Perhaps what I've described is purgatory.

When it got to about half-five, I went to stand on the balcony for a little while and was greeted with the alchemical gold standard of morning. The dawntime birds were all lost in conversation, the air had a chill to it that's been a thing of rarity recently and all of my surroundings had a stillness to them as if each of their individual atoms had ceased to vibrate. Most notably, a portion of the sky had taken on a honeyed colour, surrounding a smouldering epicentre. It wasn't the ceiling of flame that characterised some of the more dramatic sunrises, but a contained blaze within the cloudy pastel blue. It reminded me that I hadn't seen the early morning in quite some time, and just how calming it can be. Occasionally, I worry that I find it hard to feel big things and get swept up in a situation, but this time, all I needed to do was inhale and exhale periodically.

The elusive feature of calmness is that it allows you to feel a lot more open about the ideas orbiting your mind. It was easy to look into the great sky yoke and say to myself "I'm going to do this", and so the wheels kicked into motion. My original idea was to keep the formula relatively similar to that of a carrot cake, but with a honey buttercream and a scattering of toasted pine nuts. Turns out, pine nuts are pretty expensive, and I wasn't willing to pay £3.60 for something that would only serve as a cake topping, let alone recommend that others do so too. Hazelnuts, truly the relatable friend of the nut kingdom, swooped in to take their rightful place. I retained the idea for a honey buttercream, but decided that I would give it a saltier edge. Eventually I realised that the flavour profile here was that of a honey-glazed parsnip roasted in brown butter, which sat just fine with me.

This cake is easy to assemble, and also relatively cheap as cakes go. One of the great things about vegetable cakes (as some, understandably, may need convincing) is that they tend to use cheaper ingredients than their fruity or chocolate-based counterparts. This is probably a good recipe to try if you're on the fence about parsnip in a cake; the taste isn't vegetal at all, but you do get a slight pleasant woodiness towards the end of each bite. Plus, it's not as if you're going to have to remortgage anything to make it. The ingredient list may look long, but 4/5 components from the buttercream also appear within the cake, so it is much more approachable than it might initially appear!

Parsnip & Salted Honey Cake with Hazelnuts

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 30-35 minutes

Ingredients

Cake

160g plain flour

3 large eggs

230ml vegetable oil

160g caster sugar

100g grated parsnip

2 tbsp clear honey

3 tbsp hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Topping

200g unsalted butter, softened and cubed

100g caster sugar

3 tbsp honey, plus 1 tsp for drizzling

1 tbsp hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

1/2 tsp salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C (for gas ovens) or 150°C (for fan) and grease and line the base of two 9-inch round cake tins.

Add the oil, sugar, honey and eggs to a large mixing bowl and whisk until combined and smooth.

Sift in the flour, spices, salt, baking powder and bicarb and stir with a wooden spoon until all of the ingredients have combined together.

Add the hazelnuts and the parsnip to the mix and stir through until they have been distributed evenly throughout.

Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared baking tins (I don't have an eye for estimation so I find a weighing scale is handy here), ensuring that the tops are smoothed out. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool in their tins for a further five minutes, before turning them out on to a cooling rack. Allow them to cool for about an hour before applying the buttercream.

To make the buttercream, add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk until the mix is pale, fluffy and aerated. The time this takes will vary depending on what equipment you are using. I hand whisked, and it took me about five minutes.

Mix the salt and honey into the buttercream, ensuring it is all combined. Spread the buttercream consistently over both layers of the cake. To achieve a neat finish, position the spreading knife on the radius of the cake. Turn the plate, while keeping the knife in the same position, going all the way around. This should make the buttercream more smoothly spread and consistent.

Stack the two layers together, and sprinkle the top with hazelnuts. Drizzle the remainder of the honey over the top in whatever pattern you may like!

This cake should be kept in the fridge until ready to serve.

Notes & Adjustments

• The availability of flour at the moment is still pretty inconsistent. If you can only find self-raising rather than plain then that's fine, just take out 1 tsp of baking powder from the original recipe. You are also welcome to use wholemeal flour, if that's what you have available. You could also try other alternative flours, but these vary a lot more in terms of how you should bake with them (and I am very inexperienced in that department!)

• If parsnips don't appeal to you, then you could also recreate this with carrots instead.

• I tried to find soft light brown sugar to use in this recipe, but I couldn't find it anywhere. If you can find it, then by all means try it out, but the white sugar does provide good results.

• If you feel confident enough to try it, you could always sub the hazelnuts on the top of the cake with pine nuts. If you do this, I would remove completely the hazelnuts from within the cake, halve the amount of salt in the buttercream and toast the pine nuts before sprinkling them on the cake.

• You can also use salted butter for the buttercream, and take out the extra salt.

Of fragile dispositions

Occasionally I'll be able to trick my mind into thinking that I might just be good at cooking. After all, I write pretty frequently about it so one might hope to find some degree of authority within my voice. I'd even argue that it isn't necessarily a cogent metric to gauge how qualified one might be to run a blog, however I did just re-watch the film Arrival with my flatmates, so all Earthly issues have suddenly been relegated to a state of superficiality.

But, let's pretend that my own quibbles are as worthy of note as extraterrestrial linguistics. Occasionally, in my Earthbound kitchen, I'll come across something that makes me feel a little less versatile as a home cook. Last post it was pastry, this time around it is silken tofu. I think that the soft, silken variety is what we think of most as standard tofu, with a very melt-away texture. As a result, it can be pretty delicate to work with; handling it too strongly or even slicing it with a slightly blunted blade can cause it to develop small fractures. So, not exactly the ideal ingredient for my fumbling hands, but alas, there was a block of it in my cupboards and I was determined not to be defeated by it.

I wanted coat the tofu in a sauce that was flavoured with black pepper and Sichuan peppercorns (by the way, the recipe I'm doing today is called Two-Pepper Tofu with Mixed Vegetables) but would need a way to prevent it completely disintegrating in the wok; no one wants to eat vegetables flickered with shards of bean curd. The way forward was either to boil or deep fry before including within the main dish, and though contending with a pan full of hot oil might seem illogical as part of a strategy of removing hazards, cauterising the outer layer of the tofu seemed the most comfortable for me. Also, almost exclusively, fried foods taste better than boiled foods.

This kind of reflects human life. I like to think that, no matter who among us may try to trick ourselves otherwise, we're all innately fragile creatures and that's something to be embraced. We just need to find the coping method which suits us best; how do you go about metaphorically frying yourself in hot oil? It's pretty important now too to get to know your own vulnerable dimensions and which of them could be troubled by the events of late, namely staying at home for extended periods of time.

I think it's good to have something you can consistently work on in your spare time, but I also don't think that it should have anything to do with professional development. There's a very pervasive late-capitalist mentality, that has seeped into most of us as to an extent, that monetises time and fuels ghoulish productivity influencers to ask us to set ourselves a checklist of goals to complete during a time of slow-burning global trauma. It's fine if that's going to help you, but for many people (myself included) it feels all too much.

I don't want to position myself or my flatmates as paragons of coping, because we are quite decisively not, but I think we've all managed to pick up things that we can work on to help us get by. Owen has been trying to pick up some sign language, mainly from watching YouTube videos, and Rebecca has been doing a lot of embroidery recently; they've both been trying to learn how to play the harmonica too. I think I'm going about this on a slightly smaller scale through keeping up with the blog and doing engraving art kits (they might be for children?). However, I want to emphasise that you don't need to come out the other end with a new skill or anything, just something that allows you to spend a moderate amount of time on it. I want to recommend the engraving art kits because they are just that low key and require zero skill.

Back to the tofu; does it require skill? I still don't think it's particularly relevant. I've always resisted describing what I do here as being skilled because I think that makes it a whole lot more accessible. I feel if anything, gradually building up knowledge and familiarity around food and cooking is more useful than having specific techniques; you could just Google them, maybe? These are murky waters that I don't want to wade into, but I'm going to take two things from it; that I should try things that make me uncomfortable, but not concern myself too highly with how versatile I am as a cook. I'm not going to get stopped on the street and asked to demonstrate how to poach an egg (I would not pass this test), so why act as if I wouldn't need to look up how to do it beforehand. If you know why you're poaching that egg, then I think you're all set!

So, a note on the actual recipe! As you may have gleaned, it is peppery. This is the first time that I've used peppercorns not as a seasoning but as a primary flavour. Don't worry though, if you've ever bitten into a peppercorn and received a gunpowder burst that nestles at the very back of your tongue and refuses to leave, it isn't like that at all. It's still mellow enough, with the black peppercorns providing a consistent warmth, and those from Sichuan giving a very slightly numbing tingle. This is all melded together with a very savoury backdrop. If you want to add the pepper gradually and taste as you go, I'll understand and even perhaps recommend this course of action!

Two-Pepper Tofu with Mixed Vegetables

Preparation time: 35 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Serves: 3-4 people

Ingredients

1 block of silken tofu (approx. 350g)

2 medium carrots, cut into thin diagonal slices

200g chestnut mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 bell pepper, thinly sliced

1/2 a white onion, coarsely chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed and minced

1-inch piece of ginger, thinly sliced

1 stalk of celery, cut into thin strips

2 spring onions, sliced diagonally

2 red chilies, thinly sliced

200ml vegetable stock

1 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tsp chinkiang vinegar

1 tbsp rice flour

1/2 tbsp ground black pepper

1/4 tsp ground Sichuan peppercorns

1 tsp sugar

Vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt

Method

Remove the block of tofu from the packaging and let it sit on a plate for 30 minutes. While it is sitting, prepare the vegetables as specified in the ingredients list.

Once it has done sitting, tip any liquid that had seeped from the tofu off of the plate. This is to stop it from sizzling too violently when fried. Cut your tofu into 12-14 pieces, by slicing it in half down the length of the block and slicing each half 6-7 times. If possible, use a lightweight, sharp knife for this and cut in one clean motion to prevent breakages (as you can see from the picture, I did not do this perfectly so don't worry if you do get a few imperfect chunks).

In a large wok or saucepan, pour in enough vegetable oil (the amount will vary depending on the pan) to cover the tofu and bring it to a high heat. Check it has come to temperature by cutting a tiny amount of tofu from one of the chunks and placing it in the oil. If it sizzles then the oil is ready. Lower each chunk into the oil one by one and allow to fry for 3-4 minutes. You can fry multiple chunks at once but take care not to crowd the pan. Remove the tofu when finished with a spatula and shake some of the oil off, before letting it sit on kitchen towel or baking parchment.

Pour the excess oil into a heatproof container and leave this to cool. As tofu is largely flavourless, this oil can be cooled, strained and re-used. Rinse out the wok with hot, soapy water until the oily residue has gone.

Add one tbsp of vegetable oil, swirl around the wok and place over a medium high heat. When the wok has come to temperature, add the white onion and celery and saute for 3-4 minutes or until softened. Turn the wok down to a medium heat and add the garlic, ginger and red chilli, and stir in for 30 seconds. Add the carrots and the bell pepper, and turn back up to a medium-high heat and saute for 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms and a 1/4 tsp of salt before sauteing for a further 2 minutes.

Pour in the vegetable stock, soy sauce, vinegar, ground black and Sichuan peppercorns and stir through with the vegetables. Add the remaining 1/4 tsp of salt and the sugar and bring the mixture to boil on a high heat. Once this has come to a boil, turn down to a medium-low heat and simmer for 2 minutes. After this has finished simmering, taste and adjust the seasonings if necessary.

In a small bowl, take 3 tbsps of the cooking liquid and stir it into 1 tbsp of rice flour until it has combined completely. Pour this mixture into the wok and stir it in completely. This will thicken the cooking sauce slightly. Turn the heat up to medium, and add in the spring onions, stirring them into the sauce.

Using a spatula (ideally silicone) fold in the tofu chunks, taking care not to break them. You may wish to carefully slice each chunk in half before adding them in (I did) as this makes it easier for them not to bend and break up. Once they have been folded into the mixture, keep on the heat for a further two minutes before taking the wok off of the stove.

Serve with rice, and sprinkle with sesame seeds and some extra spring onion greens or a scattering of red pepper flakes if desired (and available).

Notes & Adjustments

• This would also work with equal quantities of firm tofu. If you use the firm variety, you'll need to press it for half an hour. You can do this by laying sheets of kitchen towel both above and beneath the block and using laying a weight on top of it (I find a hardcover cookbook to be a good weight to do this - I wouldn't use anything that's much heavier). Instead of deep frying, I would shallow fry the tofu for 2 minutes on either side before stirring in at the end.

• The 'mixed vegetables' are wholly negotiable. Aubergine goes brilliantly with black pepper if you wanted to use it. I would probably steer clear of leafy vegetables like pak choi or spinach, but you're welcome to try just in case my instincts do deceive me. On this same note, the colour of the bell pepper really doesn't matter; some people are very against green bell peppers, but it was what I had around so that's what I used.

• This would probably be good with a tsp of sesame oil stirred in at the same stage as the spring onions, however I did not have any at the time so I can only leave it as a firm recommendation!

• If you don't have chiankiang vinegar, you could use 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar mixed with soy sauce. If you don't have balsamic vinegar, then pretty much any other vinegar will work!

• Any type of mushroom is fine to be used here.

• If you can't find Sichuan peppercorns, then just leave them out and add an extra 1/2 tsp of black peppercorns. You could also substitute it for a 1/4 tsp of mace. My local Tesco sells both Sichuan peppercorns and mace in the spice section, so hopefully you'll have no trouble with locating it!

• Rice flour can be substituted for cornflour, or any flour that is commonly used for thickening sauces.

It begins with this

If I could pick just two categories that I am hopelessly unfamiliar with, it is French food and pastry; would this also be a good time to mention that the recipe this post focuses on is David Leibovitz's Caramelised Endive and Blue Cheese Tart? This isn't a warning sign of a lapse into culinary masochism, though perhaps contending with pastry does come pretty close (or, at least, I thought it would), but more of a wish to combat some irrational preconceptions.

I think that I had a lot of assumptions about French food that could do with a degree of scrutiny. For example, one of the things that went through my mind pretty commonly went along the lines of "we never have wine in the flat so I don't think I can cook it". Clearly not every French dish requires imbibement, but I'd absorbed the notion that I'd need a cupboard full of Merlot, vermouth, dry sherry et al that I'd have no intention of drinking. Am I also right in thinking that the dishes that have alcohol are more likely to be the ones that include meat too? I think maybe a bit more research is in order.

On the matter of research, it's probably a good time to admit that I did take a short break to Paris back in 2015. This was a solo trip, that my 21-year old self probably wasn't quite ready for. It begun somewhat vexatiously with me not being able to locate my tucked-away hotel, taking the Metro to the next stop over before jumping into a taxi, breathlessly gasping "...salut!" and showing the driver a Google Maps screenshot of where I needed to get to. He then proceeded to drive me to an establishment approximately 10 metres from where I had begun; I am nothing if not a seasoned citizen of the world.

Honestly, the trip was a lot of fun and not something I regret doing, but I didn't have a lot of confidence to interact with anyone. In the evenings, I would find a supermarket with a self-service check out (and pray that all of the items in the bagging area would be wholly expected), grab a baguette, cheese and other assorted snacks before returning to my room to watch The X-Files. To this day, the first season of that show transports me right back to Paris. While this set me on the important life path of wanting to believe (and having a crush on both Mulder and Scully, of course), it meant that I didn't really eat any actual French food while I was out there. The closest thing was probably the pleasant pot of coffee that came with the de rigeur continental breakfast that was served in the mornings.

There is also the issue of there being an aura of fanciness around French food that doesn't seem to exist for other cuisines. Remember when it used to be super common on TV for someone to utter the phrase "...it's French" to denote some kind of superior pedigree of an item. That's not to mention the use of the language. A couple of years back I worked in a petrol station that stocked products from what is probably the UK's most pretentiously branded supermarket (again, not naming names). One day, we started stocking boxes of refrigerated fries that could be taken home and cooked in the oven. The catch? They were branded as "frites". Somehow, somewhere along the line the executive decision was taken to write the word fries in French to give a sense of mystique to fried potato sticks. If your eyebrows aren't currently levitating at about ceiling level, then I invite you to go to McDonald's (when they open again, mind) and ask the server for some grand frites.

I actually did have the plan earlier this year to take a trip out to a French city that wasn't Paris and try to be braver than five years ago. I found myself in Hanoi last year (albeit with my "travelling buddy" mother) mastering buses and trying my gosh-darn best to speak Vietnamese with a little success, so who's to say this couldn't be replicated in France? Well, personal finances inevitably got in the way, but maybe one day. For now, David's blog has been incredibly helpful. Not in the sense that it is any sort of masterclass, but mostly just for being exposed to French food that is often quite simple. That's not to say that there aren't any complex dishes or that there shouldn't be, but that there are some very accessible entry points. I think of the blogs Orangette and The Wednesday Chef as having a similar clarifying effect.

Now comes the issue of pastry. Its terrifying, or at least it seems that way when you're never working with it. I've had the impression that catastrophe can be irreversibly ushered in with a single rogue fold or an erring knead; this doesn't gel very well with the attitude I try to take in the kitchen that even if things don't go entirely to plan, it is very rare that the result is completely unsalvageable. In terms of a challenge, this recipe was relatively mild given that David himself uses shop bought pastry, which takes out part of the horror. As such, I can't say I've taken down the great wall of fear that surrounds this particular section of cooking, but it's a beginning. The stated parameters here were simply to take the quantity of prepared dough, and roll it out to a 12" round.

It'd be remiss to not inform you that I prepared this without the cast iron skillet that the original recipe calls for. I have to say, it is certainly ideal to cook this in a pan that is both oven-safe and able to fry on a medium-high heat, just for ease of assembly. I ended up using a wok to initially cook the endive before transferring over to a spring-form baking dish which was probably a little too small (but would just have to do). One day I'll write a post about trying to get by with less equipment than is deemed ideal, but today is not that day! If you do have access to cast iron skillet, or something similarly oven-proof, you will be able to tuck the pastry into the filling with greater success. I think I had trouble with this given that my own pastry had inflated like a balloon (you could say it had puffed up) and quickly deflated again on removal from the oven. This wasn't exactly an issue, but you could definitely tell that mine wasn't made with great finesse.

Attractiveness aside, I found this recipe to be worth the uncertainty, and as fraught as I've made the process sound, it was actually pretty calm overall. If the combination of bitter yet caramelised endive spears and salty blue cheese over a layer of pastry appeals to you, then check to see if you have anything that you could potentially make this in! To be honest, I think being able to improvise is a great way to develop your skills in the kitchen, and is a lot more important than the ability to present an immaculate tart tatin. If you don't eat pastry often, then you're still going to come out with something that feels pretty special and doesn't take a Herculean effort. Also, it only has seven ingredients, and that includes both salt and pepper, which is always welcome. As always I'll give some notes about adjustments below (looking at the blue cheese haters in particular here).

Sorry, one last thing; doesn't Endive Spears sound like it could be the name of Britney Spears younger sister?

David Leibovitz's Caramelised Endive and Blue Cheese Tart

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 55 minutes

Serves: 3-6 (depending on hunger + accompaniments)

Ingredients

2 tbsps of unsalted butter

450g of endive, about 7 spears

Pinch of salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 tsp of sugar or honey

115g of blue cheese

230g puff pastry

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (gas) or 160ºC (fan).

Cut the spears of endive in half lengthwise, and set aside. Melt the butter in a 9-inch cast iron skillet and sprinkle the salt and pepper over once the butter has melted.

Add the endive spears to the pan, cut side facing downwards. The pan may become crowded, but squeeze them all in and get them as close as possible.

Cook the spears over a medium-high heat, and press down on them with a spatula as they cook. Try not to disturb them or jostle them around too much, as they will caramelise best if kept in the same positions. After around 4 minutes, the cut sides should have browned. Apply the sugar or the honey evenly over the endive spears, cover the pan and put in the oven to bake for 25 minutes.

While the endive is in the oven, roll out the dough to a 12-inch circle. Getting this to be precisely circular was something I struggled with, but I found it helpful to turn the pastry incrementally and do two backwards and forwards rolls with the pin at each stage. I didn't get a perfect result, but it did leave me with something that was for the most part circular.

After the endive has had it's full time in the oven, remove the pan and scatter the blue cheese evenly throughout, making sure to get it in between the cracks as well as on top of the spears. Then, drape the pastry dough as neatly as possible over the endive, tucking in the edges around the spears and the inside of the pan. Try to drape the dough as flat over the endives as possible in order to avoid the trapping of air inside the tart.

Bake the tart for about 25 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Remove from the oven and overturn on to a serving platting. I find it easiest to lay a plate over the top of the skillet and then flip it over. If any of the endive spears stick to the bottom of the skillet, carefully dislodge them and assemble them back on to the top of the tart.

If you like, add extra blue cheese on to the top or garnish with some chopped parsley. Serve warm.

Notes & Adjustments

• For those who do not like blue cheese, do not fret! Flatmates-of-the-blog Owen and Rebecca had suggestions for replacement cheeses; Owen says a strong cheddar would be good, and Rebecca advocates for goats cheese.

• As my spring-form dish was slightly smaller the cast iron skillet called for, I only used 2 endives for this dish (that is the pack size they commonly come in at supermarkets). If you are using less endive than the stated quantity, consider cutting them into quarters rather than halves.

• Endive is often sold in the UK under the name chicory.

• I served this with some roasted new potatoes, but I imagine this would also be good with some baguette and a salad too.