Nuts, all Hazelnuts!

Fanny was often thought of as 'kooky' to say the least, but her culinary mission was simply to show us all how to make the most delicious things to eat and share using the most straightforward, most economical ingredients available. She imagined we would be insane to not follow in her footsteps, creating weird dish after wonderful dish, but sometimes she focused on uncomplicated techniques instead. Here, she introduces us to her Noisettes au Chocolat or Chocolate Hazelnut Rectangles. They are Hazelnuts with chocolate, shaped into rectangles. Nothing wacky, nothing bonkers, just that.

The hazelnuts need to be freed from their skins first of all. Fanny places hers on a dry baking sheet and pops into a warm oven, lowest shelf, for a few minutes until the skins rub off easily. To make it even easier, I am not daft, I pop them in a small plastic bag once they are baked and rub them together. The skins fall off, the hazelnuts can be picked out and the messy skins remain in the bag. Clearing up those flaky coverings would drive anyone round the bend.

Fanny hasn't really discussed sugar work all that much so far in the partwork, but for these rectangles she binds together the nuts with a light caramel. Fanny uses exactly 32 pieces (of equal size) loaf sugar dissolved and gently heated on a low flame. Never sure what loaf sugar is, I did some research and it seems unrefined golden granulated sugar is a good alternative. It was driving me berserk trying to find out what size the pieces should be, so I just guessed a measurement. Not worth going out of one's mind for. Fanny instructs not to touch the sugar until every grain is dissolved, then to turn the heat up to a soft rolling boil until the syrup turns to a pale straw colour. Or, if you are like me, leave it a little longer still (oops) and it will be a darker caramel. Fanny would've flipped out.

Fanny flings her nuts into the caramel and forks them around for a few moments until the syrup becomes slightly tacky. She has at hand a ready oiled tray and pours them out immediately into a big nutty lump. But fear not, she also has a cut lemon at the ready to shape the rough lump into a large rectangle. You may think dear old Fanny is as mad as a March hare, but the lemon actually works really well, doesn't stick or pull the sugar at all. Once in a large rectangle, Fanny uses a sharp knife dipped in boiling water to cut into smaller rectangles. There are enough rectangles in this recipe to drive you round the bend.

Once cooled, the smaller rectangles are dipped in softened chocolate chips, just enough to cover the base and sides. I've also added an extra-special double-dipping with hundreds and thousands. I know, I'm unbalanced, a culinary psycho. Fanny lets the small oblongs set back on a lightly oiled surface. The finished rectangles are crunchy, nutty and simply sweet, perfect for any Mad Hatters Tea Party, or perfectly sane persons afternoon snack. Nothing batty, nothing potty, nothing cuckoo, just sugar-coated, full-flavoured cheap and cheerful specialities from Fanny.

It's My Fanny-versary!

Two years. Two whole years that Fanny Cradock has completely taken over enriched my life as I've enhanced taken over her Cookery Programme in this blog. In some ways it feels like I only started yesterday, while in other moments it does feel that I've been recreating weird and wonderful Cradock creations for ever. It has been twenty four months of fun, laughter and at times, let's be honest, horror at some of the things I've been making with Fannys guidance. I wouldn't swap a day of it though, I've enjoyed almost all each and every one of the 1,051,200 minutes.

To celebrate this two year Fanny-versary, Fanny has the perfect Chocolate Sponge Gâteau, which she strangely translates as Biscuit au Chocolat. After one hundred and four weeks together, nothing surprises me, least of all the exclusive questionable French translations. Fanny is part French you know. Fanny refers to it as a 'simple' sponge, made using the genoise method of whipping eggs and sugar together until they are voluminous. Fanny uses her beloved sweetened drinking chocolate to flavour the sponge, sifting it with her equally beloved self-raising flour and gently folding it into the well risen egg and sugar mix.

Fanny adds a little melted butter to the mix, presumably to make it lavish and luxurious. Fanny says it should be softened butter, which might suggest room temperature, but her instructions are to stir it in, so I use my common sense well trained initiative and melt it first. Fanny and I are becoming one and the same horrifically attuned as the months roll past it seems, I can translate her unique strange language and instructions with ease. Mostly. I even manage a little smirk to the imaginary camera while I cook and wrinkle my nose softly while giving any assistant brave enough to come close an almighty wallop.

Fanny bakes her special sponge in a square six inch tin. I don't have a square one that small, so substitute for a perfect serviceable round one, which is six inches diameter. Buttered with a greaseproof circle in the base and floured, naturally. The cake bakes for only 35 minutes before emerging all light and springy from the oven. For everyday situations, Fanny recommends her most lazy favourite of servings - a simple dusting of icing sugar, very thick. Hides everything. Hang on though, this is a very special occasion, so what does Fanny suggest to mark seven hundred and thirty long happy days together?

The answer I am sure you are all screaming is Mocha Buttercream, piped into tiny rosettes with a small star nozzle. This is always the answer. Except today, I am switching things up with three flavours of buttercream - rose, chocolate and vanilla - hey, it's my Fanny-versary and I'll vary if I want to. Fanny completes her decoration with chocolate leaves, dredged through pickings from her rose bush in the garden. Mine are pre-dredged and perfectly formed from Coco, I am sure Fanny would be raging wouldn't mind a shortcut. She better hadn't as we have a long way to go on our journey up the culinary ladder together. Two years has brought us only a quarter of the way, I do hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have so far? Will you be joining me for the remaining six years (gulp) up the giddy heights of the Cradock Cookery Programme? I have to warn you however that things get even more weird and wonderful spectacular as we progress...

Talk of the Steamie

Cooking along with Fanny Cradock regularly leads me to reminisce about foods from my own past, as well as foods that have somehow sadly become neglected in the midst of time. Sometimes Fanny is cooking things I remember we ate, or using an ingredient that I haven't seen for a while. Sometimes she is looking back on a dish that we used to eat a lot, maybe not prepared in the same way. When I see Steamed Chocolate Pudding I think of a tin from Heinz bubbling away on a stove long after the meal was finished with some dazzling bright custard waiting as patiently as we were. Of course Steamed Pudding à la Cradock, revived from history, does not involve any nasty tins, everything is prepared from scratch and prepared for a very special occasion.

You'll recall Fanny teased us with this recipe over a year ago, while she was showing us a steamed suet pudding. This time she introduces it without fanfare, after all that waiting. This is the famous pudding she created especially for the writer W Somerset Maugham. In 1981, around a decade after the partwork was published, Fanny and Johnnie were clearly more keen to recollect, publishing a book musing over their memories through the years. Actually, 'Time to Remember' was more like an early edition of Hello magazine, as they gossiped and dropped names on almost every page as they harked back to review the rich and famous folk who had enjoyed their cooking through the years.

As Fanny tells it, W Somerset Maugham, in his nineties at the time, was a man who really knew his food. Unfortunately Annette, who Fanny admits was one of the 'finest woman cooks' in France and who worked for the writer, was simply no good with 'nursery puddings' and in particular those faffy English ones. Fanny lists some of the recipes that Annette could make successfully, including Crème Maire-Louise, fish pie and a 'peasant' omelette, and also some of the well-to-do folks that had enjoyed them, including Winston Churchill, the Duchess of Windsor and the Aga Khan. But her steamed puddings were 'a disaster'.

Clearly then when W Somerset Maugham was to come to luncheon it would be a show-off affair with a showstopping steamed pudding to finish. Fanny provided a choice of two desserts but dear old 'Willie' (they were so close) exclaimed, after just one mouthful of the chocolate pudding, 'Ignore the other, take the pudding. It is truly admirable, extremely light... oh yes...!' before polishing off three portions. The pudding itself was made simply by creaming butter, adding sugar, flour and ordinary drinking chocolate with eggs and a little milk. Then steamed for three hours in a thickly buttered basin covered with buttered papers. Don't tell Annette.

Fanny served her hard-to-resist and hard-to-replicate (if you are a French cook or don't happen to have Fannys own instructions) pudding with a chocolate pouring sauce made by softening chocolate in a small pot with brown sugar and a little water. Flakes of butter are then beaten in with slosh of brandy. As ever. I'm using a Mint Puddle Chocolate from Dairy Milk, simply because it was calling to me as I stood in the supermarket checkout queue (it was on offer), and I thought it'd make a particularly good sauce. It did. The pudding is indeed light and moist. It as indeed reminiscent of those puddings I had in tins when I was young, but 'oh yes', so much better. My memories have indeed been replaced. I can't quite manage thirds, but will enjoy it at several points throughout the day, which is surely the same thing?

Fancy a Quickie?

Just to be absolutely, categorically, unquestionably 100% clear right from the get-go, it was Fanny who named these little chocolate petit fours 'quickies' and not me. She also calls them Bon Bons if you find it easier to swallow. Quite a number of the recipes included in recent parts have been totally filthily innuendo laden, almost as if dear old Fanny simply can't resist slipping one in, as it were. Maybe it's the chocolate that gets her all a quiver? Fanny claims that it has a psychological effect on children where they feel the need to smear it all over their naughty little hands, leaving distraught parents to holler at them 'Willy, don't gobble dear!'... You see, she can't control herself. Minx.

Presumably it's the potential waste that smearing chocolate would produce that upsets Fanny so. Fanny doesn't like to squander chocolate, and these 'quickies' are crafted mainly from thrifty leftovers. That's why they are so quick you see. Leftover buttercream and leftover chocolate. What? Who on earth has leftover chocolate just lying around? Perhaps Fanny has gone around snatching squares from the un-expecting naughty but otherwise (we can presume) innocent children intent on daubing and guzzling. She will have none of that.

I'm cracking open a fresh bar of specially coveted couverture I happened to snatch myself on a recent wander around Stockbridge Market, a Haggis spiced bar from Edinburgh based Chocolate Tree. Fanny swore by the restorative powers of Haggis, claiming it had cured her of a nervous breakdown, so surely it would be her choice for an afternoon fumble with a quickie too? Luckily for me, I don't need to be nervous, the chocolate doesn't contain any actual Haggis, just the spices and some oatmeal.

As I don't have any just kicking around, I firstly need to make some of Fannys buttercream, which is a mix of egg yolk, icing sugar and butter. Fanny whisks the yolk with the sugar over a pan of boiling water until it becomes light, fluffy, thick and 'absolutely free from streaks'. Got it Fanny, I'm fully clothed. To cool it down a bit, Fanny takes it off the heat and whisks it over a bowl of ice that she happens to have to hand until it's cold. Kinky. It's quite like a thick custard at this stage, but when beaten butter is mixed in it loses it's inhibitions and loosens up a little. Fanny adds some much reduced coffee to make hers Mocha. Everything with Fanny is Mocha. Not sure that Haggis and Coffee are good bed-fellows, so I add some chocolate extract from Little Pod to mine to oomph up the chocolate taste, before adding some of the melted Haggis stuff.

To the buttercream, Fanny adds a splash of Brandy (and we all know what Brandy makes you) and whips it with an electric whisk, adding more melted chocolate until it's so stiff the beaters almost grind to a halt. Whoa. All that's left to do is pop the mix into a piping bag and swirl it into little metallic cases. As it's so rigid I really need to squeeze hard, and they come out in well-rounded clusters rather than erect little twirls. How very Ferrero Rocher. I'm sure the Ambassador would be very keen to devour a quickie at the climax of his reception, and Fanny would be pleased to oblige. Just keep those smear-loving over-stimulated kids away from these, they'll only start gobbling again. These are for adults only.

Taking The Pistachio

Fanny reckons that she has the home cook completely sussed. She knows how to make them vulnerable. According to Fanny they are already susceptible enough when it comes to chocolate recipes, so her plan is to make them (or hang on a cotton-picking minute, does she mean me?) doubly defenceless. Fanny can always spot a chocolate obsessed home cook you see, they will tend to read, ponder over and generally sort out any other kind of recipe, but give them an absolute dud with chocolate and they will rush to try it. The solution is of course to give them a good one, one of Fanny's! Fanny says there is not one 'woman in a thousand' who will fail to betray her slimming diet with 'just a slice', 'only one' or 'just a very small portion'. No duds here.

I'm not on a slimming diet, but the flavour combination that makes me go weak is chocolate and pistachio. I just love it. Fanny uses pistachios from time to time, but warns that in the 1970's they were hard to find, and way beyond the already stretched purse for many. I'm not tightening any belts just yet though and was thrilled to find the Lindt Pistachio Delight on sale in my local supermarket - I'd previously discovered it in Paris and fell in love... Chocolate with a pistachio filling, what's not to adore? Perfect for a twist on Fanny's Moist Chocolate Cake, non?

Fanny starts this cake by preparing the tin, naturally. She uses a perfectly ordinary 8" Victoria Sponge tin, buttered, lined with a disc of greaseproof paper, buttered again and then floured. It may seem like a faff, but I find it quite therapeutic really and the cakes always pop out well at the other end. This sponge is genoise in style. Fanny says to whisk up whole eggs and an extra yolk, with caster sugar in a bowl over another bowl of boiling water. Not that I want to cheat or anything, but I've seen recently that using a stand mixer on high speed produces the same results, and is less finicky. After all that tin preparation I need a short cut! Poor Sarah, my mixing assistant, makes light work of it, whipping it up until it is thick, risen and pale in colour. Fanny warns that if you cut down on the whipping you will spoil the cake! Thankfully Poor Sarah just keeps going and going.

This sponge only has a small amount of flour, but it needs to be added carefully so as to not take all the air out of the risen mix. Fanny folds hers in with a plastic spatula before adding softened chocolate chips, which I'm swapping for my pistachio chocolate. The mix is really thick and sticky, so takes a fair bit of folding to incorporate the flour and chocolate before pouring into the prepared tin. Fanny bakes hers for the very exact timing of 24 minutes, but I found mine needed much longer - probably another 20 minutes. Maybe it's because I didn't whisk it over the boiling water which presumably would've started the cooking process? Or maybe Fanny made a mistake? Surely not.

Fanny hides the inevitable crusty cracked top of the cake by flipping it over, then covering it with homemade almond paste. To keep with the pistachio theme, I experiment, switching the almonds for pistachios. I whizz up some gorgeously green and purple nuts and blend them with an egg white, orange blossom water, rose water and icing sugar. Just a quick knead and it's ready to roll. Fanny glues hers on with warmed apricot jelly, but I am using some homemade marmalade, which seems to work well. The pistachio paste is a great colour, natural for once, and covers the bouncy chocolate cake well. Fanny makes chocolate shavings to top hers, I chop up some more pistachio chocolate. You can never have too much. I'm ready to be exposed to a slice or two, it tastes nutty, not too sweet and very light. Surely not too calorific, it must be mostly air. I'll leave the small portions for those vulnerable slenderising home cooks, Fanny is training me in her professional ways, which I am taking to mean eat well, eat often, eat lots. That's my kind of diet.

Mocha Choca 'Lette Blah Blah

Fanny starts Part 21 with a riddle, of sorts, to tease the subject we will be tackling together next. She says it's like the ones you will find in crackers at parties. 'What is it that is so fraught with problems for home cooks yet almost everyone adores?' Fanny asks. What could the answer to this mystery be? Fanny doesn't keep us guessing for too long thankfully, the answer is, of course, Chocolate! She ponders another riddle too, this time involving men at buffet parties who declare 'I'm not really fond of sweet things and hardly ever eat them' but then come 'roaring back' for thirds when a chocolate pudding is plonked on the table. The third riddle for me is why on earth has Fanny decided to begin a partwork choc full of sweet cacao with, erm, a Mocha Chocolate Soufflé Omelette? Is it to teach those pesky men a lesson?

Fanny does love her sweet omelettes, but I've yet to find anyone else who does, and I've yet to be converted myself. They just seem so wrong, a complex culinary conundrum, but Fanny keeps right at them. Together we've already made mincemeat versions for Christmas, jam ones for everyday puddings and I may have glossed over an apple one once. Don't shout at me. Something about them just turns my stomach. There, I've said it. I love omelettes, with cheese or mushrooms, maybe an onion or even from time to time a tomato if I'm feeling crazy. But I've never come to the end of a meal and thought 'if only I had a coffee flavoured chocolate omelette to finish off this feast I'd be happy', have you?

Fanny uses chocolate chips in all her chocolate recipes. She says they are an excellent alternative for the housewife to proper chocolate 'couverture' which was only available wholesale when Fanny was writing. She says the proper stuff is somewhat beyond the average housekeeping budget's strained resources at any rate. As a result of this quandary, she embraces the chips, only if they are treated well. Apparently they respond to kindness, are otherwise fairly easy going and merely resent being overheated. This is fatal. If you do, your finished chocolate masterpieces will be sad and grey looking, like those chocolate figurines you've probably seen in south facing, unprotected sweetshop windows during hot weather. It's a very specific comparison. No dilemma really, just be kind.

To avoid any sad and grey complications, Fanny recommends that chocolate chips are softened in a bowl placed in a low oven with the door slightly ajar. Then beat the 'living daylights' out of them. To make it Mocha, Fanny simply adds a tablespoon or two of coffee. The final piece of this puzzling pudding is the omelette itself. No escaping it. While a dry pan is heating on a very low flame, the egg yolks are stirred into the softened mocha choc mix and the egg whites are whipped to a very stiff peak. They are then blended together. It makes a kind of mousse-like concoction, all ready to be cooked. Whether you want to or not.

Fanny adds a walnut of butter to the pan, turns up the heat a fraction and swirls the butter to coat the entire surface. In goes the mixture. Fanny is adamant that you should not touch it until you see big bubbles breaking on the surface. Then, and only then, do you slide a spatula underneath and fold the omelette into thirds like a letter, and out on to a waiting plate. Serve with pride, and a dusting of icing sugar as ever. It is still soft in the middle of course, as with all of Fannys' omelettes, served 'baveuse'. What a treat - a moist, slightly undercooked, puffed up, sweet, chocolatey, eggy omelette. It tastes unmysteriously like it sounds, but does have a brain-teasing consistency somewhere between a swiss roll and mousse. I don't think Fanny needs to worry herself with any more riddles, the enigmatic menfolk won't be returning for seconds, never mind thirds.

I'm linking up this lovely Omelette to the Simply Eggcellent bloggers link up for June hosted by Dom from Belleau Kitchen - it's important to share the weird and wonderful ways of Fanny Cradock...