Forever Summer (24 page)

As with all trifles, it’s not the amounts which are so important, but the layering: in other words, different-sized bowls will require different quantities of ingredients; the ones that follow are enough to fill a bowl – and it should be glass – of about 2 litres capacity.

8 trifle sponges

200g blackcurrant jam

1 x 200g packet amaretti biscuits

250ml limoncello (or other lemon liqueur)

juice of half a lemon

750g blackberries

2 eggs, separated

100g caster sugar

750g mascarpone cheese

50g flaked almonds

Split the trifle sponges and make little sandwiches of them using 150g of the jam, then wodge them into the base of your glass bowl. Reduce the amaretti biscuits to rubble in the processor and, reserving some crumbs for sprinkling over the top at the end, scatter most of them evenly over the sponges and then pour over them 150ml of the limoncello. Put the remaining 50g of jam into a wide saucepan with the lemon juice and melt over a low heat, then tumble in the blackberries and turn in the heat for a minute or so just until the juices start running. Tip these over the biscuit-sprinkled, liqueur-soused sponge sandwiches to cover and leave this while you get on with the next bit.

Whisk the egg yolks with the caster sugar until you have a thick smooth yellow paste. I use my Kitchen Aid for this, but any old hand-held electric mixer or whisk would be fine. Still whisking, drip in another 50ml limoncello and continue whisking away until you have a light moussey mixture. Whisk in the mascarpone until everything is smoothly combined, and when this is done add the remaining 50ml of limoncello. Finally, in another bowl, whisk the egg whites until firm, but not dry, and fold these into
the lemony, eggy mascarpone mixture. Now spread this gently over the blackberries in the glass bowl.

Cover the thus-far assembled trifle with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for the flavours and textures to steep and meld for at least 4 hours and up to 24. Take the trifle out of the fridge for about 40 minutes to an hour before it’s needed (depending on how cold your fridge runs) to get to coolish room temperature. Not long before you want to eat, toast the flaked almonds by tossing them in a dry, oil-less pan over medium heat until they are turning gold and flashed bronze in parts, then tip them on to a plate. When they’re cool, mix them with the reserved amaretti crumbs. Remove the clingfilm from the bowl and scatter the nuts and crumbs over the pale, set surface. Dig in and serve, making sure to heap the full triple-banded layer on each plate: the lemony, almondy, cream-swathed berrieness makes this the perfect ending to a large, lazy summer lunch.

Serves 12–14.

FIGS FOR A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

This is so simple – scarcely a recipe really – but so good. Unless you get figs straight from the tree they sometimes need the blistering heat of an oven or grill to bring out all their honeyed sweetness. The cinnamon is emphatic, certainly, but it doesn’t overwhelm the whole; it, rather, infuses the fruit, along with the kitchen you’re cooking it in, with mellow spiciness. This is the pudding to end a slow-grazing, long-picking dinner eaten outside on a warm, balmy night.

If you haven’t got any vanilla sugar, just use ordinary caster sugar and add a drop of pure vanilla extract along with the flower waters. A Middle-Eastern store of some kind will stock packets of slivered pistachios, vividly green and splintered into little boat-shaped shards. But if you can’t get them, just buy shelled pistachios from a healthshop or supermarket and chop them roughly with a knife or mezzaluna yourself.

12 black figs

50g unsalted butter

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon vanilla sugar

1 and a half teaspoons rosewater

1 and a half teaspoons orange-flower water

1 x 500g tub mascarpone cheese

100g slivered pistachio nuts

Preheat a grill or oven to the fiercest it will go.

Quarter the figs, taking care not to cut all the way through to the bottom, so that they open like flowers, or young birds squawking to be fed worms by their mummy, and sit them, thus opened, in a heatproof dish into which they fit snugly.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the cinnamon, sugar and flower waters. Stir to combine and pour into the figs.

Blister under the hot grill or bake in the oven for a few minutes and then serve; it’s that quick. Just give each person a couple of figs on a side plate. Splodge alongside some mascarpone over which you drizzle some of the conker-dark syrup, then sprinkle over some of those green, green shards of pistachio.

Serves 6.

CHOCOLATE PEANUT SQUARES

There is something, particularly in the heat, about the combination of salty and sweet. In truth this is nothing more than an elaboration of millionaire’s shortbread, suggested to me by a Saturday night spent lying in bed watching
The Bone Collector
on
TV
while eating clumps of peanuts out of my left hand and slabs of chocolate from my right. Who wouldn’t be inspired by that heavenly mingle in the mouth? Ambrosia from the Gods.

for the shortbread base:

225g plain flour

75g caster sugar

175g soft unsalted butter

for the peanut filling:

200g soft butter

1 x 397g tin condensed milk

4 tablespoons golden syrup

250g dry-roasted salted peanuts

for the topping:

250g good-quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

75g good-quality milk chocolate (or 325g dark chocolate alone, to taste)

23cm square brownie tin or similar, sides and bottom lined with baking parchment

Preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3.

Make the shortbread base the agreeably lazy way by dumping the flour, sugar and butter into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the double-bladed knife, and process until you have a sandy mixture that is beginning to clump up. Turn this out on to the lined tin and press the mixture in with your fingers. If you have long nails you may find this easier, or at least more cleanly achieved, by using the back of a spoon. Once the mixture’s all pressed in, smooth it either with your hands or a spatula. Prick it at regular intervals with a fork and cook it in the preheated oven for 5 minutes, then lower the oven to 150°C/gas mark 2, and cook for a further 30–40 minutes until it is a pale gold and no longer doughy. Remove to a wire rack and let cool in the tin.

For the peanut-caramel filling, spoon the 200g butter into a large microwaveable bowl and melt in the microwave – this should take 2–3 minutes – then add the condensed milk and golden syrup. Whisk the mixture well until everything is combined and stick the bowl back into the microwave. Cook on medium for 6–7 minutes until it is boiling, removing it very gingerly every couple of minutes to give it a good stir. (Making the caramel in the microwave this way is much quicker than the traditional method, and the way I always do it, but be careful not to burn yourself. One day I’ll show you my battle scars.) It’s ready when the gooey mixture has thickened and turned a light, golden brown. Stand to cool for a minute or so and then whisk a bit to disperse the heat. Stir in the dry-roasted peanuts then pour and scrape over the cooled shortbread, spreading with a rubber spatula to make sure it’s evenly covered, and leave it to set.

Again, I always use a microwave to melt chocolate: it is quite the easiest way – no faffing with bowls suspended over pans of simmering water – and the chocolate melts smoothly and seems much less likely to seize. Just break the chocolate into pieces into a microwaveable bowl and cook on medium for a couple of minutes; after which time it may need another couple before it’s melted, but it’s better to take this slowly. Out of the microwave, give the melted chocolate a slow stir with a rubber spatula to combine both milk or dark (leave it alone if using dark only), and pour and spread it (remembering that the less you touch it, the shinier it will be) over the peanutty caramel mixture in the tin. Leave it to cool.

Once set, cut the chocolate peanut block into 24 squares. If you are foolhardy enough to have arranged a picnic, make sure you bring a batch of these along. Just pack the tin, along with a good knife, and cut on site.

Makes 24 squares.

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND PASSIONFRUIT MOUSSE

So much in cooking, as in the rest of life I suppose, is about contrast, about balance. Here the acerbic fragrance of the passionfruit undercuts the otherwise over-egged richness of the white chocolate: this gives you flavour, intensity, sweetness
and
light.

On standing, the clear, sour-sweet juices of the fruit collect under the mousse: place raspberries in the glass first (again contrast, this time of colour, too) and let them become plumply infused and almost headily soused beneath.

300g white chocolate

6 eggs, separated

10 passionfruit

300–500g raspberries

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in the microwave for about 3 minutes, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (see remarks on melting
white chocolate
) then set the bowl aside, and let the chocolate cool a little.

Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix the egg yolks into the cooled chocolate, though be gentle to ensure it doesn’t seize. Cut the passionfruit in half and scoop them, juice, pulp, seeds, into the yolk and chocolate mixture, then fold into the egg whites until completely incorporated.

Line the bottom of either a big glass bowl or eight to ten small glasses with a layer of raspberries – it’s hard to be specific: it depends on the diameter of the glasses, or bowl, at the base really – and pour over the mousse. Leave for a couple of hours to set in the fridge, or for at least 4 if you’re using one large bowl. Strangely, given that I lean normally towards the communal rather than individual serving, I generally go the one-glass-one-person route. I think it’s because this is intense enough to require – even for me – small portions, and it’s impossible to dollop out as little as would fill a small glass without seeming mean.

Serves 8–10.

COCONUT SLAB

I have a weakness for army-style catering: the bigger the pan, the happier I am, and there is something particularly satisfying about baking a cake in a roasting pan. This is my regular for the cake stall at the school summer fete, but those whose lives are serenely untouched by the demands of the PTA can wheel it out, with an easily assembled salad of roughly chunked papaya, mango, pineapple and spooned-out passionfruit, dressed with a squeeze or two of lime, to provide a Beano-portioned pudding for expansive parties on hot summer days or to produce atmosphere of same.