A Whack of Leather - Our Third Fanny-versary!

Three really is a magic number, but sometimes it feels a little overlooked. I mean everyone likes a 'first' don't they? Nothing better. The Winner! The Original! The Pioneer! Second feels like a real achievement, having kept going and 'done it again', still pretty good compared to first. Third though, it's a bit like, okay, that's great. A kind of 'well done' but also a 'what's for tea' kind of celebration really. So, it may just be me, but today I am shouting it loud and cheering (for myself) as Fanny and I celebrate a terrific three years together. Aw. That's 'leather' in anniversary terms... Oh. Best move on.

Three years! You may not have been reading along from the very beginning (erm, but now I think of it, what not?), but that's a lot of weird and whacky recipes, a lot food colouring and a lot of mentions of poor, down-trodden assistants getting into hot water for not following instructions. That's probably where the leather comes in - a quick whack with a belt? It's also three years of learning new techniques, uncovering new flavour combinations and generally having a real laugh. Every day. That's not bad going is it? With Fanny watching over me. Every day. I don't think I've done anything deserving of a good belting. Yet.

I must distract Fanny's mind from leather. Fortunately Fanny has just the thing in mind for 'our' celebration - a three tired cake. Okay, so she's got her celebrations a little mixed up, but it's the thought that counts isn't it? She remembered! Her idea is to make a three tiered wedding cake, perfect for a June bride. She did love a good wedding, whether in June or not. She even had a fake one or two along the way, often more than one at the same time, and never really much clarity on who was married to whom, but we're not being judge-y today of all days, it's a day to celebrate.

Fanny suggests her tried and tested Christmas Cake (is it too early to mention?) for the three tiered triumph. We've made it before, together of course, but never in triplicate. Fanny informs us that the base layer is to be cut and eaten on the wedding day. The second layer should be stored away to celebrate the First Anniversary, or if we are more ambitious, and have blooming good storage, the Silver Wedding Anniversary. The Third and final tier is intended to celebrate the birth of the first child. I fear that Fanny may be waiting quite some time for that particular celebration. Maybe a sacrificial leathering is the best option after all.

So, it's a spicy, fruity, slightly boozy cake fest in June. Once all three cakes are mixed up and baked, Fanny urges us to move swiftly onto the decoration. Almond Paste followed by Royal Icing is essential as a starting point. She advises that it is best to practice decoration on an entirely irrelevant cake that you just happen to have lying around. This is what she makes Johnnie do. Poor Johnnie, it keeps him occupied. He decorates the bottom layer with stars. I, on the other hand, do not have any irrelevant cakes, or indeed any that hang about too long, but I am always applying the knowledge that wise old Fanny gives me. So I know cakes should be blue. Mix the two together and surely this is the ultimate Third Fanny-versary cake? The big question is, will we still be together for the next five years of Fanny Fun required to compete the Cookery Programme? Our next Fanny-versary is the much more suitable Fruit and Flowers, so don't be scared...

A Mille Feuille Love Songs Later

Now that we've mastered our own puff paste, Fanny thinks we are ready to move on speedily to the Classics. Well, the kind of Fanny version of the classics that we have become accustomed to, and in many ways expect to see. Fanny has, with only our very best interests at heart, worked out a way that we can make the Classic Mille Feuille - which is traditionally difficult to make really well - easily and quite quickly. Fanny has scoffed her way around a fair few cream puffs in her quest to find the best, and frankly some of the soggy objects she has been offered were not fit for her, or us. Her version will be the only one to do.

If you haven't made Fannys homemade puff paste, she does say that you can buy some in the shops. It really was more straightforward than expected though. Either way it should be rolled out very thinly, to an extremely mean quarter of an inch. Fanny uses a 'proper' Mille Feuille metal frame to measure and cut - inside the frame please - out the required shapes of pastry. They are then cooked inside the frame to ensure that they remain the correct size. I don't have a frame. I decide to go a bit more free-form, cutting neatly measured rectangles using a pizza cutter. I've been watching the Bake Off Crème de la Crème you see. Fanny may not be pleased, but Cherish the ruler regulator might be.

The only trouble with precision measuring and cutting is that my pastry rolling skills are not precise. So I end up with a lot of off-cuts. In her crusade to enlighten me to the proper, professional way, Fanny has a solution. So, while my rectangles are puffing up on a wetted base in the hot oven, Fanny suggests we set about making some Palmiers. The scraps of paste are cobbled together and rolled out to a large rectangle, brushed with a beaten egg and sprinkled wth sugar. The long edges are rolled in to meet each other in the middle, and stuck together with more egg wash before being sliced and arranged on another wetted tray ready to be baked. Savoury Palmiers may be made using cheese instead of sugar if required. Handy to know, thanks Fanny.

Fannys Classic Mille Feuilles require nothing more than assembly for the first stage. Fanny splits each puffy rectangle in half horizontally and begins making a tower of puffy leaves sandwiched with jam and cream. Confectioners custard may be used in alternative layers too, but I stick with the classic jam and cream combination. I've got extra thick double cream which spreads well and doesn't need to be whipped, so my arm can have a rest. Fanny insists on there being seven layers in all, so one half a rectangle will not be used. Nor will it be wasted. Fanny dusts it with icing sugar and slices it into fingers for tea. I'd be tempted just to have eight layers really, there would still be no waste at all, but I suppose that's not the classic way.

The classic topping is a simple Glacé Icing (icing sugar mixed with a little water) with a chocolate swirly decoration drawn into it. Fanny uses her very favourite softened chocolate chips, but I have a shortcut in a tube. Fanny 'runs in' (the proper technical term) the decoration using a butchery needle. I am quite scared. Thankfully I have a much safer chopstick to hand, perfect for swirling duties. Fanny does say if you simply can't be bothered, don't. Oh. It won't affect the taste of this classic at all. Too late, I've done it. I'm classic through and through, it seems. Fanny is simply doing her job, showing us everything she possibly can, giving us the finest possible information. And, bearing in mind she still has that butchers needle in her hand, we are so very grateful. Aren't we? The finished Mille Feuille won't win any style awards, but it is so tasty. The pastry crisp, light and feathery. The cream and jam balanced well. No soggy objects. Classic Fanny.

Voulez-Vent, ah-ha!

Fanny is all puffed up in the kitchen today. Even more so than usual. It's not her ego that's inflated on this occasion, but rather her classical culinary knowledge that has that 'bloated' feeling. She's bursting with joy to lead us towards a very steep but satisfying step on her 'culinary ladder' to master once and for all the particular pleasure that is perfect puff pastry. It also allows dear old Fanny to drop a few names and Michelin stars into the mix as she recounts the tale of how the greatest of all pastry pastes, pâte feuilleté, came into being. Ideal.

Fanny tells us that French chefs split hairs over it and dispute minuscule variations on its handling. Just a warning. So, we are so very fortunate that Fanny spent some time in the cool, sunny kitchen in Les Baux of Le Roi de Feuilletage (the English translation of the King of Puff Pastry doesn't quite do it justice) himself, the three-Michelin starred M. Raymond Thuillier. Nestled in the troglodyte hills and caves of the remote village, with caves that you could drive a London Bus into if you should ever posses one, apparently, they were also joined by the famous French artist M. Bernard Buffet. What a perfectly named celebrity for such a lover of home entertaining as Fanny.

The honourable Frenchmen shared the tale, as well as the skill, of the puff pastry with Fanny, who in turn shares it with us. Splendid. In a Paris restaurant in the eighteenth century a young junior chef was ordered to make a batch of butter pastry. All seemed well, as the youngster make quick work of it, and put the paste to store in the cool cave for a few days until required. It was only then that, with horror, he realised he had forgotten the butter. So he whipped out the fatless paste, slapped the butter in the middle, rolled it out, rolled it again and again until the butter was not visible and returned it to the coolness of the cave. No-one would know.

When the chef demanded his pastry, the young boy gave it to him but began to tremble with fear, in a way that Fanny surely recognised well from a very similar and constant reaction by her own assistants, as it was rolled out, glazed and baked in the oven. No-one at that time expected to see it reach several inches in height with paper-thin layers. The chef demanded to know what the youngster had done, and instead of walloping him with a wooden spoon when he confessed, he kissed him and shouted 'C'est magnifique! C'est feuilletage!' Fanny would never have done that...

Fanny recreates the magnificence for us in a glorious pic-strip. She makes a ring of self-raising flour on a cold marble surface, while squeezing every drop of moisture from her butter in a double layer of muslin. Half the butter is chopped into small cubes and rubbed into the flour, then the juice of a lemon (Yes! Lemon Juice!) with very cold water added and scissored in with two knives to make a paste. Only touch the paste directly after you have held your hand under a running cold tap for as long as you can stand it. Once chilled, roll into a rectangle. The remaining butter is shaped into an oblong, folded in the centre, turned, rolled and folded again. Chill for 30 minutes in ordinary domestic refrigeration and repeat 5 times. A pillow of pleated puff.

For Fanny, the first thing to do with the puff is naturally the buffet-tastic classic, Vol-Au-Vent. She uses metal cutters dipped into boiling water before use for large circles, and smaller cutters cut only three-quarters way through the paste for the centre piece, which then makes the top. Always dipped into boiling water first. Baked on a wetted tray and majestically risen, they are perfect filled with mushrooms cooked with soured cream. Fanny may not have had any stars or accolades of her own, but with these little crowns I hereby pronounce her La Reine de la Pâte, or more simply perhaps, The Queen of Puff.

Not On Your Nellie

Fanny Cradock is in full-on reflective mood. She wants us to recall the days when London still equalled Paris as the centre of the Gastronomic world. Even readers in the 1970s may not have been able to cast their thoughts back the eighty or so years that Fanny had in mind, but luckily she was able to fill in the blanks. You can always rely on Fanny. Her story begins long before the 1890s, and involves a man who had run barefoot and fished for trout as a little boy in the stream which runs through his birthplace, which happened to be Villeneuve-Loubet in Provence. So, not dear old Johnnie then? Ringing any bells for you yet?

Fanny gives another clue. He reigned supreme at the Savoy Hotel in London and indeed over 'all the greatest chefs in the world'. Shame on you if you didn't guess that Fanny is all a bit dizzy thinking about her all-time hero, and inspiration for everything gastronomic, Georges Auguste Escoffier. As well as footwear-free fishing, Escoffier apparently adored grand opera, and had the pleasure of cooking for Australian Operatic Soprano Dame Nellie Melba when she stayed at 'his' hotel between 1892 and 1893. He adored her and his hotel in equal measure it seems. Probably as much as tickling trout with his toes.

Escoffier apparently famously took a night off to hear Dame Nellie Melba sing Elsa in Löhengrin at Covent Garden. Walking back to the Savoy afterwards, no details were given as to shoes or no shoes, the Swan of Löhengrin merged with his constant culinary thoughts to such an extent that by the time he reached his kitchens the original Pêche Melba had emerged - peaches served on a bed of vanilla ice cream, set between two wings of a magnificent swan shaped out of a block of ice. Thankfully he wasn't reminded of his childhood, or fish would've been a feature. Swans though are totally worthy of a grand night out at the opera.

Or the Royal Albert Hall. Sixty years later in 1957, Fanny recreated an exact replica for 6750 people (exactly) at her sell-out show. That must've been one BIG tub of ice cream. The swan was sculpted from a 30lb block of ice, just to give a sense of scale to Fannys presentation. Presumably Johnnie was set to work on the Swan Sculpture while Fanny performed. Fanny realises that even if we were inspired to, recreating her version of the recreation of the creation (Escoffier added Raspberry Purée at a later date) in this way would not be possible. So she urges us to forget the swan that seemed so central (put down that chainsaw Johnnie) and focus on the simplicity of the dish, which she says, is well within the scope of any cook. Even us.

Provided of course you have an ample purse. Vanilla pods, fresh peaches and 'out of season' raspberries (for nothing else will do for a Pêche Melba) do not come cheaply, but do make a fantastic difference on the very occasional times you can afford them. Do not even consider the 'abominable ersatz substitutes' of tinned peaches, vanilla essence, bought ice cream and 'cloying pink sauce' made with imitation raspberry flavouring and tasting 'quite disgusting'. Which would naturally be choice number one. Instead, poach your fresh peaches gently in vanilla sugar syrup, set them atop a bed of luxurious ice cream, and drizzle with fresh, sieved unsweetened raspberries. This is the Real Peach Melba, the most famous of all ice cream puddings. Simple it is, but deliciously divine. Swans are entirely optional.