Authors: Nigella Lawson
BASIC FRENCH DRESSING
If you want to change oils for this, use part walnut or hazelnut oil, part olive oil. Don’t replace the olive oil totally. Just a tablespoon of the nut oil plus olive oil should achieve the variation in flavor that you are after. If you want to change vinegars, do so uninhibitedly, but taste first to check the level of acidity and adjust the other components correspondingly.
scant ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard (optional)
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt
good grinding black pepper
6–8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
If you’re using the mustard (and I sometimes use a tarragon mustard—feltily green and lightly, rather than effusively, fragrant—and sometimes none at all), mix it in a bowl with the vinegar, the salt and pepper, and a drop or two of cold water, then whisk or fork in the oil (I often use Ligurian, which is sweet and mild). Or you can put all the ingredients for the dressing in an old jam jar, screw on the lid, and shake.
Put most—but not all—of your salad leaves in your salad bowl and add the dressing. Toss. Taste. If you find you have sloshed on too much dressing, add the spare leaves and toss again.
CAKES
We no longer live in a world where baking a cake is considered a basic skill. That, one could argue, is reason enough to include a recipe here. And I don’t mean a fancy cake, but just a plain, ordinary sponge.
VICTORIA SPONGE
A traditional Victoria sponge is made in two halves that are sandwiched together with jam or crushed fresh raspberries and cream (and don’t forget to sprinkle the top of the cake with superfine sugar later).
I make this cake in the processor. Realizing you can make a cake without all that creaming first is a revelation. Without the beating, however, you don’t get all that air into it, so you have to add some extra baking powder. I don’t always sift the flour, but I probably ought to. I have found that the addition of cornstarch gives the cake an almost feathery lightness. The butter must be very, very soft or it won’t all blend together. I always use organic eggs.
1½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sugar
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) very soft unsalted butter
2 teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract or zest of ½ lemon or orange
4 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter two 8-inch round cake pans.
Put all the ingredients, except the milk, into the processor and process to mix. Check that everything has mixed all right, and then process some more while pouring the milk through the funnel. You want a batter of a soft, dropping consistency. Add more milk if necessary. Pour into the buttered pans and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes. When ready, the tops should spring back when pressed and a cake tester or fine skewer should come out clean.
Let the cakes stand in their pans for a minute or so and then turn onto a wire rack to cool. Sandwich together with cream, jam, raspberries, or whatever you like.
Obviously, you can make the cake the oldfangled way. Cream the butter and sugar till pale and soft, then add the eggs, alternating each egg with 1 tablespoon or so of the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder, sifted together. When the eggs are beaten in, add the milk and vanilla, then fold in the rest of the flour mixture.
You can also make the sponge in a single 8-inch layer. Halve all the ingredients except the vanilla—use 1 teaspoon—and keep the full amount of zest, if you’re adding it. You’ll have to make this the traditional way; there’s too little batter for a processor to do the job properly.
BIRTHDAY CAKE
It’s wise to have in your repertoire a pretty fail-safe chocolate cake. I call this birthday cake because that’s what it seems to get made for mostly. It’s plain but good, and the chocolate ganache with which it’s draped is gleamingly spectacular and ideal for bearing birthday candles. With this recipe, you don’t need to be dextrous or artistic—and any other form of icing for a birthday cake requires you to be both. But if you want to make the sort of cake you actually write Happy Birthday on, make a Victoria sponge and look at the children’s party food on page 450 for additional ideas.
So many chocolate cakes now are luscious, rich, and resolutely uncakey—rather like my chocolate pudding cake with raspberries on page 316—that I feel nostalgically drawn to this solid offering. And—this is the best bit—it is ridiculously easy to make. No creaming or beating or whisking. Stirring is about the extent of it. I know condensed milk looks like a spooky ingredient, but trust me.
A note on the chocolate: I like to make the cake with bittersweet chocolate (average 60 percent cocoa solids in best-quality brands) but the ganache with a mixture of bittersweet and milk chocolate. The light chocolate I use is Valrhona Lacte (which I think has about 35 percent cocoa solids), but most supermarkets sell a good-quality continental chocolate, which is comparable. As to what proportions to use, that really is up to you. I change them depending on who’s eating the cake, but it’s likely to be half dark, half milk, or sometimes two-thirds dark to one-third milk.
FOR THE CAKE
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup best-quality unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup superfine sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
2/3 cup evaporated milk
3½ ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
2 eggs, beaten
FOR THE CHOCOLATE GANACHE
8 ounces best-quality bittersweet and milk chocolates (see above)
1 cup heavy cream
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the kettle on. Butter an 8-inch springform cake pan (or two 8-inch round cake pans) and line the base with baking parchment. This last is not crucial if you’re using nonstick pans, but even so, it removes all worries about turning out the cake later.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together into a large bowl and set aside.
Put the sugar, butter, evaporated milk, ½ cup just-boiled water, and the chocolate in a saucepan and heat until melted and smooth. Then, using a wooden spoon, stir this robustly but not excitedly into the flour mixture and, when all is glossily amalgamated, beat in the eggs.
Pour into the springform pan and bake for 35–45 minutes, less if you’re using the shallower cake pans. When it’s ready, the top will feel firm. Don’t expect a skewer to come out clean; indeed, you wouldn’t want it to. And don’t worry about any cracking on the surface; the ganache will cover it later.
Leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a rack.
When completely cool, split in half horizontally; if this sort of thing spooks you, you should certainly use 2 cake pans and stick the 2 layers together—though remember, even if the cake breaks while you divide it, you can stick it together with the ganache.
To make the ganache, chop the chocolate (I put it in the processor until reduced to rubble) and put it in a medium-sized bowl, preferably a wide, shallow one rather than a deep basin shape. Heat the cream to boiling (but do not let it boil) and pour it over the chocolate. Leave for 5 minutes and then, by choice with an electric mixer, beat until combined, coolish, thickish, and glossy. You want it thin enough to pour but thick enough to stay put. At this stage, think of the ganache as somewhere between a sauce and an icing; later, it will set hard and Sacher-torte shiny. Pour some over the cut side of one half of the cake, using a metal spatula to spread, and then plank the other half of the cake on top. Pour the rest of the chocolate ganache over the top of the cake, letting it drape over, swirling this overspill with your spatula to coat the sides. Leave for a couple of hours or till set. You can make the cake the day before and then make the ganache the next morning before you set off for work. You can then get back in the evening to your gleaming masterpiece with nothing to do save puncture its flawlessly smooth surface with candleholders.
FANCY CAKE
Well, this is not so much a fancy cake as a plain one that looks partyish. It is just an almond sponge leavened with whisked egg whites and baked in a brioche or bundt mold. It looks wonderful, intrinsically celebratory, which is why I do it. Added to any plate of fruit—fresh or thawed frozen—it can be served after dinner or lunch. It’s no harder to make than a round cake; it’s just that the fancy mold (and try to find a nonstick one) makes it, illogically, look as if you’ve made about ten thousand times the effort. The brioche mold won’t work for a Victoria sponge because you need the whoosh of air supplied here by the whisked egg whites.
6 eggs, separated
1 cup superfine sugar
2 cups ground blanched almonds
zest of 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter an 8-cup brioche or bundt mold (you can use a standard 10-cup bundt pan, but if you do, reduce the baking time by about 7 minutes).
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until you have a pale, creamy mass. It’s easier to use electrical equipment for this but not impossible with an ordinary, hand-held whisk.
Fold in the ground almonds and zest. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff. Add a dollop of egg white to the cake batter to lighten it and make it easier to fold the remaining whites in gently, which you should proceed to do with a metal spoon. When the whites are all folded in, pour the batter into the brioche or bundt mold and bake for 1 hour. The cake will rise and grow golden, but will deflate on cooling; that’s fine. When you take it out, give it a prod. If you feel it needs another 10 minutes or so (ovens do differ so radically from one another, it’s always a possibility), just put it back and don’t worry about the cake sinking. Think of it as accounted for.
Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then unmold onto a wire rack, immediately turn to stand the right way up, and leave to cool.
A MOORISH CAKE
I ate a cake rather like this once at Moro, a wonderful London restaurant with—as the name suggests—a Moorish menu. The proportions of the cake were slightly different (21⁄3 cups ground almonds, 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar, 8 eggs, the zest of 2½ oranges), but the method was the same. (Because of the increase in the batter’s volume, however, bake this in a 10-cup mold.) The real difference in the cake was the syrup, which was spooned over it as it cooled, leaving some more to be handed round on serving.
THE SYRUP
To make the syrup, combine the juice of 10 oranges, ½ cup sugar, and a cinnamon stick in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Let it bubble away for about 10 minutes or until the liquid is syrupy. Exactly how long this takes depends on the width of the pan and how it conducts the heat. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. If you need to cool the syrup quickly, stand the pan in a sink of cold water. And when it’s cool, taste, and add the juice of 1–2 lemons, depending on how sweet it is. Bear in mind that the cake will be very sweet, so it is important to keep a sour edge to the syrup for balance.
Blood oranges, available at the end of winter/beginning of spring, make a spectacular, impossibly scarlet, syrup.
BREAD
Bread is basic in the staff-of-life sense, but making it is hardly a fundamental activity for most of us. I don’t get the urge that often, but every time I have, and have consulted a suitable book, I have been directed to make whole-wheat bread. You may as well bake burlap. Why should it be thought that only those who want whole-wheat bread are the sort to bake their own? Good whole-wheat bread is very hard to make, and I suspect it needs heavy machinery or enormous practice and muscularity.
Anyway, I give you this recipe for old-fashioned white bread, really good white bread, the sort you eat with unsalted butter and jam—one loaf in a sitting, no trouble. The recipe found its way to me at a breadmaking workshop given at the Flour Advisory Board in London by John Foster. He was an exceptional teacher, and completely turned me, a lifelong skeptic of the breadmaking tendency, into a would-be baker.
BASIC WHITE LOAF
Buy the best flour you can and use compressed fresh yeast, not dried, if at all possible. Before you get put off, you should know two things. The first is that fresh yeast is available at many supermarkets; the second is that you use the fresh yeast here as you would easy-blend or instant yeast—there’s no frothing or blending or anything, you just add it to the mound of flour. Be aware, however, that fresh yeast is extremely perishable; always check package expiration dates before buying it, and use it promptly—within two weeks if stored in the fridge. If you do want to use dry yeast, make sure it is easy-blend or instant.
For a good white loaf such as even I can make convincingly—a small one, so double the quantities if you want a big loaf or a couple—you need:
2¼ cups bread flour
2½ teaspoons compressed fresh yeast, or 2 teaspoons easy-blend or instant dry yeast