The Kitchen Diaries

Get the oven hot. It needs to be at 160°C/Gas 3. Peel the onions and slice them into thick rings. Cut the celery into short lengths. Peel the parsnip, carrots and potatoes and cut them into fat chunks. That’s 2–3cm if you are measuring. Pile the vegetables into a large, deep pot, then tuck in the chops, thyme and bay leaves. Season with a little white pepper, no salt, then pour in the drained barley and enough water or stock to cover the meat and vegetables completely. Bring it slowly to the boil.

Skim off the worst of the froth that has accumulated on the surface, easily done with a ‘holey’ spoon. Cover the top of the stew with a sheet of greaseproof paper, then with a lid. Transfer the pot to the oven and leave it there, untouched or fiddled with, for a good two hours.

Remove the lid. The liquor should be thin, thickened only slightly by the potatoes. Chop the parsley and mix it in carefully, so as not to smash the vegetables, then season with salt and black pepper.

Leave overnight. Next day, skim the fat from the top, then reheat slowly on the stove till the meat is thoroughly hot and the broth gently bubbling. Check the seasoning – be generous – and serve piping hot.

Enough for 4

A frosted marmalade cake

I don’t, as a rule, like icing. Yet on a home-made cake, drizzled over so that it sets wafer thin, it adds a welcome contrast to the soft sponge. You could use water to mix the icing but I prefer to use fruit juice, occasionally adding a hint of orange blossom water to perfume each slice of cake.

butter – 175g

golden unrefined caster sugar – 175g

a large orange

eggs – 3 large

orange marmalade – 75g

self-raising flour – 175g

For the frosting:

icing sugar – 100g

orange juice – 2 tablespoons

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Line a loaf tin about 25 x 11cm and 7cm deep. Put the butter and sugar in a food mixer and beat till pale and fluffy. Finely grate the orange. Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. With the machine set at moderate speed, pour in the beaten egg a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition. Beat in the marmalade and the grated orange zest.

Remove the bowl and fold in the flour with a large metal spoon. Do this slowly, firmly but carefully, till there is no sign of any flour. Lastly, gently stir in the juice of half the orange. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, lightly smoothing the top. Bake for forty minutes, checking it after thirty-five with a metal skewer. Leave to cool in the tin – it will sink slightly – then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.

Sift the icing sugar and mix it to a smooth, slightly runny consistency with as much of the remaining orange juice as it takes – probably just under two tablespoons. Drizzle the icing over the cake, letting it run down the sides, and leave to set.

Enough for 8

January 8

The first

rhubarb

The first rhubarb appears with impeccable timing. Just as you want a fresh start to the year, along come the pale pink stems of the most tart and clean-tasting fruit to cleanse and invigorate. I no longer cut the stems into chunks and dip each piece raw into the sugar bowl like I did when I was a kid, but I do poach it only very lightly, so that the stems retain their shape, then I eat it first thing in the morning, slurping up spoonfuls of its limpid pink juice.

Frozen yoghurt with roast rhubarb

Warm, rudely pink rhubarb and snow-white frozen yoghurt has a smart, bright flavour and is breathtakingly pretty on a cold winter’s day. The frozen yoghurt is simply a bought vanilla smoothie chucked into an ice-cream machine; the baked fruit just rhubarb bunged in a dish with a spoonful of runny honey and the juice of an orange.

thick vanilla yoghurt smoothies – 3 × 250ml

young, pink rhubarb – 500g

an orange

mild honey – a tablespoon

To make the frozen yoghurt, pour the smoothies into the drum of your ice-cream machine and churn till almost frozen. Scoop out and into a plastic freezer box, then keep in the freezer till you need it.

Cut the rhubarb into short lengths about the size of a wine cork. Lay them in a shallow stainless steel or glass baking dish, squeeze over the orange juice and drizzle with the honey. Bake for twenty-five minutes at 200°C/Gas 6, occasionally spooning the juices over the fruit. The rhubarb is done when the stalks are tender enough to crush between your fingers. Leave to cool a little.

Divide the warm rhubarb between four dishes, then place a couple of scoops of frozen yoghurt on each, though it looks rather elegant served in separate bowls.

Enough for 4

Note

To make the frozen yoghurt without a machine, pour the smoothies into a plastic box and freeze for a couple of hours till a thick layer of ice crystals forms around the edge. Whisk the frozen edges into the middle of the mixture, then freeze again for an hour or so. Repeat, again beating the edges into the middle. Now leave the mixture to freeze. The whole process will take about four hours, depending on the temperature of your freezer. Try to catch the ice just before it freezes solid. The texture will be less smooth than if you use a machine.

January 9

Rain and

an old-

fashioned

cake

This is the grey, endless drizzle that Britain is regularly accused of having, yet in truth we rarely see, even in the depths of winter. It’s the sort of day on which to light the fire, turn on the radio and bake a cake. Once the smell of baking fills the house, I find the rain suddenly matters a good deal less, if at all. I make a decent ginger cake, a love of which seems to run in our family. My Dad adored them, along with Battenburg, or ‘window cake’ as he called it, which I leave to the experts. I take mine in the afternoon with a pot of green tea.

Double ginger cake

I am rather proud of this cake. Lightly crisp on top and with a good, open texture, it is light, moist and delicately gingery. It will keep for a week or so wrapped in paper and foil.

self-raising flour – 250g

ground ginger – 2 level teaspoons

ground cinnamon – half a teaspoon

bicarbonate of soda – a level teaspoon

a pinch of salt

golden syrup – 200g