Long weekend fooding

No better way to celebrate a 5-day long weekend then a barbecue, right? Even if it was pouring outside. I made a cake and some appetisers. Others supplied delicious salad, sausages, chicken wings, bread, cookies and more cake. It was delicious.



Figs with goats cheese and proscuitto
12 ripe figs
6 slices of proscuitto, each sliced in half lengthways
120g goats cheese (or more to taste)
Rosemary sprigs to season
Olive oil
Honey

Cut the figs in quarters but only halfway down, so the segments don't separate.

Spoon in 2-3 teaspoons of cheese in the centre of each.

Wrap each fig in proscuitto and use a toothpick to secure.

Drizzle in oil and season with salt and pepper. Top with a sprig of rosemary.

Bake or grill until the cheese is soft or until it smells tasty.

Remove the rosemary sprigs, drizzle with a little honey, remove toothpicks and serve.



My cake to right. At left is a glimpse of an extremely delicious lime meringue tart.

Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing
Cake
80g sultanas
4 tbsp water
280g plain flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
120ml olive oil
160g caster sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
2 freerange eggs, lightly beaten
3 cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut in 1cm dice (Pink Lady, Jonathan or Granny Smith will do - Bramley was the suggested variety, but I don't think we have these in Australia)
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 freerange egg whites

Icing
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g light muscavado sugar (I subbed in brown sugar)
85ml maple syrup
220g cream cheese at room temperature

Grease a 20cm springform cake tin and line with baking paper.

Place sultanas and water in a saucepan and simmer over a low heat until the water has been absorbed. Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 170C. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and set aside.

Put oil and sugar into a large bowl. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways in half and, using a sharp knife, scrape the seeds into the bowl. Beat together using a whisk, then gradually add the eggs until smooth and thick.

Mix in the diced apples, sultanas and lemon zest. Then lightly fold in the dry ingredients.

Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl or in a stand mixer until at a soft meringue consistency. Fold into the batter, trying to lose as little air as possible.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The book suggested 90 minutes but mine took closer to 75 minutes so do watch out. The baked cake was golden brown on all surfaces.

Remove from oven and leave to cool in the tin. Once the cake is completely cold, remove it from the tin and slice horizontally with a serrated knife so you get two discs of roughly the same size. If it's very domed you may also want to slice some off the top.

For the icing, beat together the butter, sugar and maple syrup until light and airy; I used a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Then add the cream cheese, beating until smooth.

Using a palette knife or in my case a silicone spatula and a knife, spread a 0.5-1cm layer of icing over the bottom half of the cake. Carefully place the top half on top of that and then put the rest of the icing on top. Ottolenghi suggests using the palette knife to create waves or other patterns - for my own part, I was just glad to get it looking reasonably smooth and tidy!

From 'Ottolenghi: The Cookbook' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

TBR Challenge Books #6 and #7

Good As Gold by Joseph Heller (#6)
Heller's absurdist and blackly cynical sense of humour was perfectly showcased in Catch-22. Here, turning his attention to a Jewish professor with ambitions to work in the White House during the post-Nixon, post-Kissinger 70s, it's much less successful. In some technical senses it's as solid as Catch-22 and he's really great at tightly structuring scenes and dialogue for maximum effect. But the overall effect of the book is wearying and repetitive.

Heller's portrayal of Gold's dyfunctional family, tearing itself to pieces, is painful and unlikable rather than funny or relatable. He goes a little better in his depictions of Washington political life as a farcial scene dominated by double-think - but it's not like he's telling us anything new after the third or so scene of the kind. I forced myself to finish it but would have happily left off after about four chapters; by then, Heller has already said all he needs to say.

Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (#7)
The third collection of the serialised adventures in love and life for Mrs Madrigal's found family in San Francisco. By now we've hit the decadent 80s - Mary Ann's career is on the up, she and Brian are starting to think about settling down, while Michael's still playing the scene. This is the third in the series and Maupin has the formula down pat - the younger characters negotiating their way through the dating scene and professional life, with Mrs Madrigal presiding over it all with a loving eye. As always Maupin has funny, clever things to say about modern life, the gay scene and changes in society.

Though charming and funny to start, unfortunately Maupin's formula also contains some elements that are less than great and actually kind of bad. At about the halfway mark, the storylines all start descending into ridiculous soap opera melodramatics, complete with kidnappings, secret identities, a shooting, etc . None of these plot knots makes a lick of sense and all are much less interesting than the characters themselves. Another book that would have worked so much better if it had known when to stop.


My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge