Sample recipe from Sweet Food: Pineapple Upside-down Cake

Serves 6-8.

20 g unsalted butter, melted
2 tbs firmly packed soft brown sugar
440 g can pineapple rings in natural juice
90 g unsalted butter, softened
125 g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
125 g (1 cup) self-rising flour (= 1 cup plain flour + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp salt)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a 20 cm (8 inch) ring pan and pour in the melted butter to coat the base. Sprinkle in the brown sugar. Drain the pineapple and reserve 80 ml (1/3 cup) of the juice. Cut the pineapple rings in half and arrange them on the base.

Beat the softened butter and the sugar together until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla essence and mix well. fold in the flour alternating with the pineapple juice (the recipe recommends using a metal spoon, but I use the beater on my mixer at the slowest speed). Spoon or pour the batter evenly over the pineapple and smooth the surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

Review:
I made this cake on Sunday, and it’s very good: moist but still light as a cloud and tastes great. Although there is pineapple juice in the batter, the cake doesn’t have a pineapple flavour. This may be due to me having used cheap canned pineapple with less flavourful juice than the more expensive stuff. Whatever the reason, the cake is still good. Another time I might use condensed pineapple juice.

I don’t have a ring pan, so I used a regular cake pan and baked the cake a little longer than the recipe suggests. I only needed 5 1/2 pineapple rings to cover the base.

Recipe of the week from Salads: American celeriac (celery root) salad

This was going to be the dish of the week. I chose it because I have never (knowingly) eaten celeriac, and because it is recommended as good with ham, which is what I had decided to have for Sunday dinner. Unfortunately, availability intervened. For months I have been noticing celeriac when I have gone shopping, and thought “this I’ll have to try”, but then when I was going to buy one, it wasn’t available. I tried three supermarkets and found nothing, so I thought I would have to fall back on my second choice, potato salad.

4-6 servings.

1/2 celeriac root (about 250 g)
2 apples
50 g shelled walnuts

Dressing:
150 ml (150 g) mayonnaise
100 ml whipping cream
2-3 tsp lemon juice

Peel and julienne the celeriac and cook for a few minutes in lightly salted water. Drain and cool. Peel the apples and cut into cubes. Coarsely chop the walnuts, reserving a few whole kernels to use for garnish. Mix together celeriac, apple pieces and walnuts.

Mix together the cream, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Pour over the salad and stir to mix. Garnish with walnut kernels.

Once I have tried the salad with walnuts I will replace the photo with one that has walnuts in it.


Edit:

I went to a supermarket (a different one from the ones I visited yesterday) to get some ingredients for the potato salad after I posted the recipe, and guess what I found? Celeriac. So I decided to make this salad after all as dish of the week.

This was not the end of my ingredient problems. The ham was in the oven, getting the final glaze and the potato wedges were roasting when I began assembling the salad. The julienned celeriac was cooked and cooled, I had a nice sweet-tart apple all chopped up, the sauce was smooth and nice – and then I opened the packet of walnut kernels to discover they were rancid, a good couple of months before the sell-by date. I had no choice but to make a run to the small after-hours supermarket that is conveniently situated about 5 minutes from where I live. They had no walnuts, so I had to improvise and bought pecan nuts instead. They have a flavour reminiscent of walnuts, although they are sweeter and not as flavourful or as crunchy.

And now for the Review:

This salad is actually a variation on the classic Waldorf salad, using a slightly more elaborate sauce and cooked celeriac instead of raw celery, so the flavour is milder and the salad is not as crunchy as the original. I served it on the side with slices of smoked ham that I glazed with a mixture of ketchup and brown sugar.

The salad had a nice texture, it was mild with bursts of stronger flavour from the nuts and celeriac, but I should have used a tart apple to get more flavour. It went down well with the ham and garlic-flavoured potato wedges.

Sample recipe from Entertaining: Boston baked beans

I have eaten many kilos of baked beans throughout my life, but while I have made other kinds of bean dishes, I have never tried making baked beans. This is a variation of a classic American recipe.

500 g (1 lb) haricot beans (navy beans)
350 g (12 oz) streaky bacon, chopped
3 onions, chopped
2 tsp mustard powder
1 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs black treacle
1 142 g (5 oz) can tomato purée
Salt and pepper

Rinse the beans, cover with cold water and soak overnight. Drain, cover with fresh cold water and bring to the boil. Cook rapidly for 10 minutes, the drain. (This looks like an attempt to degas the beans).

Put beans, bacon and onion in a casserole dish and add water to cover. Stir in the remaining ingredients and season with 2 tsp salt, and pepper to taste.
Cover and cook on the oven at 150°C (300°F) for 5-6 hours, stirring occasionally and adding more water if necessary.

The books claims this makes 20 servings.