Last Saturday was very warm and sunny here in London. There was no way I was going to have a proper lunch, so thought I’d make a salad. Put together a few ingredients and then realised that yep, they were all fruit, rather than vegetables: orange, avocado and tomato. It’s a fruit salad!
I dressed it very simply with a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, cider vinegar, Maldon salt and white pepper.
It’s summer!
Last Saturday it was my friend, and flatmate, Lauren’s birthday. About two months ago I had asked her what her favourite cake was; I thought I’d give it a while so she wouldn’t suspect anything and without hesitation she answered “Lemon drizzle!” So, early on Saturday morning I snuck out of the flat, bought eggs, almost forgot to buy lemons, and rushed back to bake. Sadly, she woke up before the cake was all done, but she was not allowed into the kitchen until it was all ready.
I found this recipe on the BBC GoodFood website but I decided to revise it slightly, using plain flour and baking powder and making it a little extra lemony for Lauren, whose famous motto about lemons is “the more, the better”. This recipe is easy to remember, as butter, sugar and flour are all the same quantity, and the final result is very lemony but not sour, as there is quite a lot of sugar in the drizzle.
One thing I’ve learnt is that, even though recipes suggest you to heat the oven first thing, that’s not a great idea. Anyone who tells you that a cake preparation will only take 10 minutes is living in denial. What about the weighing? How about the chopping, melting, washing and grating? Liars. By the time you are ready to stick that cake into the oven, you’ll have wasted a good 20 minutes of gas – feel free to call me stingy. It doesn’t take that long to heat the oven, mine is old and dreams of holidays in the sun, but it takes less than 10 minutes to heat up. Just turn it on when you know you’re 5 to 10 minutes away from being done with the preparation.
Without further ado, I give you… Lemon Drizzle 61 Revisited.
What you’ll need:
For the cake
For the drizzle
Preparation:
Wash the lemons very thoroughly, dry them and grate the zest finely. Set it aside. In the meantime soften the butter until very soft, but not hot! Combine the butter with the sugar and beat them with an electric whisk until they have become a soft, pale cream. Add the eggs one by one and keep beating the mixture until everything is well combined. Now preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160C/gas 4. In a different bowl mix together the flour and baking powder, making sure the powder is well distributed. Now sift that into the cake mixture and add the zest, mixing all thoroughly. Get yourself a loaf tin, grease it with butter and coat it with flour. Pour the mixture into the tin and then flatten it evenly with the back of a spoon. Bake for about 45 minutes (try the wooden toothpick trick – if it comes out clean, the cake is ready). While the cake is in the oven, get working on the drizzle. Squeeze the two lemons and sieve the juice into a bowl with the sugar. Mix well. When the cake is ready, prick it all over with the same toothpick and then pour the drizzle over the entire surface area, letting it sink into the holes. Let it cool and then, with a flat, butter knife detach the sides of the cake from the tin, being careful not to scratch the metal if you are using a non-stick tin. Remove the cake from it, place on a plate, slice and eat eat eat!
Firstly, I would like to apologise and say that I know I’ve been terrible for not writing in an age, but I do have a couple of good excuses. Some of my absence can be put down to me being a little poorly. Nothing serious, not kicking the bucket just yet, only nagging little pains that stole all my time as I took partial residency in my doctor’s waiting room. The rest of my time has been absorbed by the editorial internship I’ve been doing at the great Kings Chelsea Magazine, which is launching in June. Yay!
Admittedly, I discovered that adjusting to a full-time shift job and a part-time internship is harder than anticipated, particularly when those two workplaces and my house are based respectively in the south, west and east of London, but it’s definitely worth it. This internship will go on until mid-August, so I am afraid that until then I’ll probably be a little out of sight. But bear with me and after that I shall be even better (or I’ll try, at least). I wish I were doing something a little more senior with my few years of experience as an editor, but sadly, fashion publishing regards itself as a different kettle of fish, and unless you have relevant fashion experience you need to start from the bottom again. So, full to my eyes with humble pie, I ping-pong across London for the best part of my days.
With that out of the way, in the UK, H&M have collected all the neglected leftover Marni stock from the back of their warehouses and placed it on sale. This reminded me how I actually did go on a mission on the line’s launch day and took pictures to write about the collection, but ended up doing nothing with them.
I remember getting to the flagship store on Regent Street at 9 am on the dot, its opening time, and asking what the queuing system was. It soon transpired that I was way too late for their manically organised schedule, and that all the wristbands (colour-coded depending on the time you were supposed to get in) had all already been given to people queuing outside since 7 am.
Anyone with an entry bracelet was placed in a group of a dozen people and had 15 minutes to enter, explore and ransack the designated Marni area, which was a cluttered, crowded, poky little affair of about 2 m2 with naturally very little room to roam around. A man with a headset microphone would aggressively shout “Ten minutes left!” “Five minutes left!” (why the shouting, crazyman Michael? You’re wearing a microphone). Two bouncers were at the edges of the cordoned-off area trying to keep us as far away as possible. Despite sounding like the opposite of offering customers what they want, this schizo approach seemed to work, and by 9:32 another batch of collars was called up as the previous bunch had sold out. For us, bracelet-less civilians, there was little to do but wait until 2 pm, when all the chosen ones had already munched their way through the collection like mice through Edam and we were left with the red wax.
As you can see from the picture, at 2:30 pm the queue outside the Oxford Street shop was still remarkable, despite the poor selection left by hurricane People. I managed to take a few pictures of the whole process but can tell you this is probably the last H&M designer collaboration I am planning to attend.
Sadly, the quality of the pictures is not up to scratch as I also forgot that picnik.com was going to be shut in April. Has anyone got another similar, free website to suggest, please?
Vintage YSL blazer; b Store t-shirt; Paul Smith shirt; Jil Sander trousers; Marc by Marc Jacobs socks, Clarks brogues.
Copenhagen Erfurt scarf; River Island skirt; clogs and jacket from Japan; Philippe Roucou bag.
Topshop scarf; Bruuns Bazaar green dress; Joop purple cardigan; vintage lilac dress; Topshop brogues; Jil Sander for Uniqlo coat.
This is one of the most meaningful recipes in my recipe book, certainly one that brings with itself the sweetest memories. This is my father’s favourite dessert and my mother used to bake it for him every time he came back for his periodical home visits from working abroad. It reminds me of the feeling of expectation you have when you know you are going to see someone dear whom you haven’t seen for months, the fragrance of baking apples coming from the kitchen takes me back to how lovely it was to sit around the table, aged 5, on an afternoon with my dad smiling, having a slice of this cake, drinking his espresso and playing around with me. It reminds me of how lovingly my mum mixed all the ingredients together, confident that my dad would’ve appreciated it as a gesture of care and love.
This is indeed my mum’s personal interpretation of a classic Italian recipe, and getting the doses out of her was somewhat of a mission: “I go by the eye” is her official motto!
I always use plain flour + baking powder so I get through the flour quicker, but you can use self-raising flour, if you prefer.
So here it is, I hope you enjoy making it as much as eating it.
What you’ll need:
Preparation:
Wash, peel, core and dice the apples for the mixture in ½ in little pieces (leave the apple for the top for now, if you peel them too much in advance they’ll oxidise and be brown by the time you are ready to place them on the cake).
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350F/Gas 4 and grease and coat an 18cm/7in cake tin. Cream the room-temperature butter and the sugar together in a bowl until all uniform and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, and add in the vanilla extract. The mixture should be quite runny. If it isn’t, add a glug of soya or cow’s milk. Add the raising powder, mix really well and finally add the chopped apples. Now pour the batter into the tin.
It’s time to prepare the rest of the apples. Wash, peel and core them. To cut them, cut the apples into vertical quarters and then slice them vertically to a thickness of about 1/3 of a cm being very careful not to break the slices. Place the slices on top of the batter as shown in the first picture above.
Bake for about 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
This cake is wonderfully moist because of all those lovely bits of apples inside that go really soft when baking so you can serve it on its own, or if you like to contrast the apple flavour, serve with cream, custard or vanilla ice cream.
Finally, I thought long and hard whether to translate the word torta into pie, tart or cake. Pie is not right as there is no crust in this recipe, and tart just didn’t feel right, as that would be a separate base with a filling and a just a fruity topping. So I decided to settle for cake, as the preparation method for the basic mixture is not too different from a Victoria sponge. Let me know what you think!
I recently discovered the designer Manuela Dack. I thought “with such a name, she can only be a winner”. Well, I was right (I don’t know if it’s down to the name, though).
Manuela Dack S/S '12
Manuela graduated from Middlesex University in 2010 and since then she has been a very prolific designer. Her first collection, Autumn/Winter ’11, was discovered at the London Concept store Machine-A and stocked at The Shop at Bluebird on King’s Road. Since then, Manuela received plenty of attention from the press and media, including Elle Japan, Grazia Magazine, Style.it, SHOWStudio, Vogue Italia, Style Bubble, W Magazine and recently The Independent and Fashion Editor at Large (Grazia’s fashion editor Melanie Rickey’s blog). And it’s easy to see why. This hot new talent’s signature elements are silk and leather layering, embellishment and texture. Her elegant style is clean despite including several intricate craft detailing, such as dreamlike hand-dyeing, embroidery and beaded fringing.
Manuela Dack S/S '12
Her Spring/Summer ’12 collection is astounding: cascading silk layers ripple ethereally like in her second film collaboration, a short video which was directed by artist Max Langlands and that focuses on the sculptural and shape aspects of clothing. British-made, delicate lace and digitally printed leather (cowhide is printed to look like stingray to keep things ethical) are juxtaposed in a natural and breezy colour palette to create a minimalistic and sophisticated collection.
The inspiration for this collection came from the designer’s childhood on the Caribbean Island of Grand Cayman. The sea, colours and textures of the Caribbean, along with the island’s traditional craft techniques, play a very strong role in influencing this collection. And the perfectionist obsession of the attention to detail, which sees beading and hand-dyeing all done in-house, the label’s production kept within the UK and the inclusion of British craft work, can only guarantee wonderfully high-quality product standards, which puts this young newcomer to the same level of high-end designers.
Manuela Dack S/S '12
Her Autumn/Winter ’12 sees the return of her inspiring outerwear, which features a powerful feminine silhouette with a focus on detail. This latest collection was inspired by a collection of carved and inlaid wooden boxes owned by the designer, which transpired in the design through cut-away leather and with an angular uniform silhouette in contrast to spring/summer’s relaxed vibe.
Manuela Dack A/W '12
Manuela won London and Paris Fashion Week Sponsorship for Autumn/ Winter 2012 from Vauxhall Fashion Scout and the Center of Fashion Enterprise and her new pieces from the S/S ’12 collection are being stocked by The Shop at Bluebird, where they seemed only too happy to take her design on board for a second time.
Manuela Dack A/W '12
Manuela Dack A/W '12
I made this soup for lunch on a cold, wintery day when I had loads of random ingredients at home and really had no idea what to cook. I decided to throw all of these ingredients together in a soup and took a few pictures, just in case the experiment turned out well – and it did!
This soup is probably the healthiest thing you’ll ever eat, and yet it’s delicious. Use whole barley rather than pearled, as the former has all its vitamins and minerals intact and, therefore, is higher in iron, protein, calcium and fibre. The barley gives this dish a hearty, creamy texture which is normally hard to recreate without dairy products. Try it and tell me what you think. These doses serve one ravenous person or two light eaters.
What you’ll need:
Rinse the barely and bring it to the boil on a high flame. Once it boils turn down to a simmer and cook for about an hour (or until it’s soft), as the whole barley takes a lot longer than the pearly type. In the meantime chop the garlic and onion to a mince and lightly sweat them with the hot oil in a sauce pan for a few minutes. Add the chopped pepper, tomato, mushrooms and minced stock cube. Cook them for about ten minutes or until the pepper softens up. The tomato will let out some water, in which the stock will dissolve. Add the boiled and drained barley to the pot of veggies and simmer for ten minutes, so that all flavours join together. Check for seasoning, although the stock should have made the soup flavoursome enough. Add the hot sauce (I go for plenty) and garnish with dried coriander leaves.
Serve by itself or with a buttered slice of toasted granary bread!
