Miss Foodwise

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British Library Event

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Monday 23 may I’m on stage at the British Library’s Food Season with superstar food historians Annie Gray and Polly Russel to talk about the Platinum Pudding and the history of patriotic food in Britain. Tickets are just 10 pounds here > and you will also have the chance to taste the winner of the Platinum Pudding Competition courtesy of Fortnum & Mason: The Lemon Swiss Roll and Amaretti biscuit TRIFLE!

UPDATE: you can now watch our talk courtesy of the Living knowledge network here >

The winner of the Platinum Pudding Competition, aired on May 12 on BBC One is Jemma Melvin and her Trifle! I had the huge pleasure and honour to be a judge together with some fab judges including queen of baking dame Mary Berry! I think as someone working in the culinary world that it is incredibly exciting to see 5000 people enter a recipe in the competition, we had several kids sending in as well! That is such a joy all on its own! Plus you never know one of these kids could become a food writer when they grow up. Jemma chose lemon as her theme because the queen had lemon posset and amaretti biscuits at her wedding. You can find the recipe for the trifle to make for your own Jubilee celebrations over on the BBC Good Food website here > You can also find the other four finalist recipes there.

Our judging panel

To catch up on the Platinum Jubilee Competition program you can go to the BBC website here > to see when it is repeated or if you are in Britain watch on iPlayer.

Platinum Pudding Competition, a pudding fit for a Queen

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I am honoured and excited to have been asked as one of the judges for this competition along with people like Dame Mary Berry, Masterchef judge Monica Galetti and Buckingham Palace Head Chef Mark Flanagan.

The Platinum pudding chosen as a winner in the competition will become part of this historic moment and will be talked about for decades, maybe centuries to come.

Traditional British puddings – photo from my book ‘Pride and Pudding, the history of Britsh puddings savoury and sweet’ (Murdoch Books)

In collaboration with The Big Jubilee Lunch, Fortnum & Mason is launching a nationwide competition to find a pudding to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen in her Platinum Jubilee year. 

All UK residents over the age of 8 have a chance for their pudding to become the next commemorative royal dish. This follows the Jubilee chicken created for the silver jubilee of George V in 1935, Coronation Chicken or Poulet Reine Elizabeth (French always sounds more fancy, right?) created by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume from London’s Le Cordon Bleu to mark The Queen’s Coronation in 1953 and the Jubilee Chicken created for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. 

As a judge and British pudding expert because of my books Pride and Pudding (Murdoch Books £20), my ‘National Trust Book of Puddings’ and my book on British baking Oats in the North, Wheat from the South (Murdoch Books £25) my advice is to look into the Queen’s long and exciting life and work and take inspiration from it. …

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Regula Culinaria – podcast episode two

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Goede Vrijdag.

(For my foreign readers, I am planning episodes in English, watch this space)

In deze tweede aflevering van mijn podcast heb ik het over de gebruiken rond Pasen in Groot Brittannië.

Ik spreek over Hot Cross Buns, Saffron buns en Simnel cake. Hieronder vind je het recept voor Hot Cross Buns uit mijn ‘Brits Bakboek’ (Oats in the North, Wheat from the South). De recepten voor de Saffron Buns en de Simnel cake vind je eveneens in mijn boek. Vergeet je niet in te schrijven voor mijn nieuwsbrief in de rechter kolom. De podcast is te vinden op alle gebruikelijke platformen, inclusief Spotify. Hier is ook een handige link >…

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Kitchen renovation with ecological aspect

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I’m excited to show you all our finished kitchen! It’s been great to read all your responses to my stories on Instagram while the renovation was ongoing – you helped me make some important choices for our worktops!

For the new kitchen we chose practicality and durability as the rule of law. You all know my vintage kitchen downstairs with the ESSE stove and the open shelves and the apothecary cabinet… the little drawers on the apothecary cabinet are troublesome for a working kitchen and the open shelves gather a massive amount of dust.

My husband Bruno designed the kitchen and we based it all on a vintage cabinet we found last year which was a reddish wood, shortly after we found the cabinet that has become our kitchen isle which settled the matter. We needed a reddish wood for the kitchen cabinets. The wood has a sustainability grade number 2 which is great and as I mentioned in my last post the sintered stone worktops are also an ecological choice.
Our walls are nearly 3 meters high so the upper cabinets can hold a great amount of our stuff – and keep it dust-free. 
Just before works started on the kitchen we also found these two old factory stools and although the wood isn’t the same, I think they make the result a bit more rough, which is nice.
When it came to choosing worktops and wall cladding, I wanted something natural and eco-friendly. Marble would have been my first choice, but in a working kitchen it poses many issues with staining. I am also aware that there isn’t an endless supply of marble so I looked into other natural options. I was surprised to find out about ‘sintered stone’ which is a man-made material composed entirely of natural minerals. I came into contact with a company called Neolith who see it as their company ideology to be as eco-friendly as they can be. They assured me that as a keen cook, ‘sintered stone’ would be ideal. It’s durable, nonporous, and it’s even being installed in restaurant kitchens as an alternative to steel, so it’s also very hygienic. On top of that, Neolith’s designs are very versatile, so I had the choice of various patterns which look exactly like marble. I was immediately sold when I saw the bold Abu Dhabi White from their new Six•S collection. But it wasn’t just purely an aesthetic choice as I said. I wanted to make a conscious choice, like integrating old furniture. Neolith is one of the most sustainable and environmentally-friendly materials on the market right now. 

…

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‘The Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook’ my new book

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Copyright Greetje Van Buggenhout

I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book: ‘The Official Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook’!<
(Scroll down for the reference list which wasn’t printed in the book because of the page count limit)

For this book I jumped into my collection of cookery books of not only the early 20th century in which Downton is set but also the Victorian era when our most beloved cook Mrs Patmore was training as a chef. I made a little excursion into the oldest cookery book in the English language for the first festive recipe for goose and witnessed the curiosity for continental cooking around the late 1920’s….

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Burleigh Pottery x Regula Ysewijn Competition

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I am a huge Burleigh Pottery fan, as you will know if you have been following me on this website and my Instagram. I have used almost exclusively British pottery in my cookbooks Pride and Pudding and Oats in the North, Wheat in the South and a lot of that is Burleigh ware. That’s why Burleigh Pottery and I thought it was a super idea to team up to celebrate British pottery and my latest book on British baking! As an extra treat I’m finally sharing the pictures I took at Middleport Pottery many years ago, scroll down to find a reportage.

On to the giveaway! The winner will receive my book Oats in the North, Wheat in the South and Burleigh Pottery are offering this amazing Blue Calico (my favourite!) set worth over £250 consisting of:
A Blue Calico Teapot
A small milk jug
A sugar bowl
A large cake plate
2 dessert plates
2 teacups and saucers

All you need to do to be in the running to win is follow @burleighpottery and me @missfoodwise on Instagram and comment telling us why you’d love to win this incredible set of British pottery! You will have extra bonus entries if you share the competition page from @burleighpottery in an Instagram story, or if you bake my Treacle pumpkin tart recipe on the Burleigh website and share a picture of it on Instagram tagging us both (so we can see it and share!). Competition ends 31 oktober!

Burleigh ware is made by hand at the iconic Middleport Pottery in Stoke On Trent, it is the last working Victorian pottery in England. Burgess & Leigh was established in 1851. “Burleigh” is a combination of the two names William Leigh and Frederick Rathbone Burgess who were the founders. In my book Oats in the North, Wheat from the South’ which tells the history of British bakes and how the diverse climate of the British Isles influenced the growth of cereal crops and the development of a rich regional baking identity, you’ll read the story of the staple food of the pottery workers in the North of England and how these bakes are a fantastic relevant and healthy breakfast or lunch option today….

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Oats in the North, Wheat from the South – Introducing my new book

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In my new book ’Oats in the North, Wheat from the South’ I’m showing the reader how the diverse climate of the British Isles influenced the growth of cereal crops and the development of a rich regional baking identity with it. Imports of spices, sugar, treacle, fortified wines
and citrus added flavour, colour and warmth to a baking culture much adored and replicated all over the world.

With the help of historical cookbooks, diaries and newspaper archives, I have given the most traditional recipe of a bake – which means, how it usually appears in old cookbooks – but often also a more recent version of that recipe to show how recipes evolve through a change of taste, economy and fashion.

With a foreword by food historian Dr. Annie Gray.

The book was nominated for the André Simon Award and included in ‘The best cookbooks of 2020’ list by BBC Radio 4’s The Food Program in the US in  The New Yorker magazine and The Washington Post.

Erratum

There are two errors in Oats in the North: When halving the recipe for Flapjacks the butter wasn’t halved, use 100g instead of 200g. For the Bannocks the same thing happened; use 225 ml of buttermilk instead of 450 ml. Mea culpa! In the new print it has been corrected.

Praise for Oats in the North, Wheat from the South:

”An excellent and diligently written book celebrating some super-tasty British treats”
—  JAMIE OLIVER

A feast for the eyes, as well as the stomach, meticulously researched and beautifully photographed, this is a true love letter to the food Britain does best. One to savour, and treasure, but most of all, one to bake from!’
—  FELICITY CLOAKE, THE GUARDIAN

”While this is a book that you just long to bake from instantly, it is also one to be read, and savoured, as it brings alive the link between culture, climate and cuisine.”
—  NIGELLA LAWSON

“It’s a love letter to British baking and all that that implies. It brings together buns and bakes that you’ll find in every local shop, and cakes and breads that have long since disappeared. Here you’ll find recipes both old and new, resurrected for the future, together with the stories that make them such a window onto both the past and the present. The joy of Regula’s writing is that through it all, we realise that it takes an outsider looking in to show us who we truly are.This is a beautiful book. It is a lyrical book. It is a book full of good things, modern and old, with a multitude of real heritage and imagined tradition behind them. Enjoy.
 — Dr Annie Gray, food historian

‘Regula – who is Belgian – has an obsession with Britain, not just its food but its literature, landscape and architecture, and we’re lucky to have such an enthusiast looking in from the outside. As well as recipes, she writes about the connections between bakes and ingredients – it’s often difficult to unravel the threads that link foods – and tells stories. A book to read as well as to cook from and an absolute gift for the curious baker.’
— Diana Henry

This stunning ode to British baking went semi-viral earlier this year, when the Tokyo-based writer Kat Bee tweeted a page from the book in which the author, Ysewijn, acknowledges the inextricable role of slavery, particularly in the Caribbean, in the development of British sweets: “Sugar has a cost, and that cost was paid by those in bondage.” This clear-eyed perspective on the line between the past and the present runs throughout the book, which threads together Cornish pasties, treacle tarts, seed cake, and all the other greats of the British baking canon. 
–Helen Rosner, The New Yorker

“Regula Ysewijn blends history and recipes in the most delectable way, with traditional cakes, buns, pies, and tarts. A British baking bible.”
— Tom Parker Bowles, The Daily Mail

Virtual Book Tour!

As the Covid19 Pandemic hit right in the week of my book launch we had to cancel all events in the UK and the US and do as much virtually as we could. Here is a great selection of podcasts and interviews!

BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour – Last guest that episode, find it here >

Olive Magazine Podcast – find it here >

Tea & Tattle Podcast – find it here >

Cooking with an Italian Accent podcast – find it here >

Borough Market‘s Borough talks – find it here >

Sunday Post interview – find it here >

At the Sauce Podcast – Find it here >

Good Food Hour – KSRO Radio Sonoma County US – Find it here >

Milk Street podcast – Boston – Find it here >

Further listening:

Gastro Podcast, The Great Pudding Off (2019) – Find it here >

Book reviews that could be helpful:

Nigella Lawson’s Cookbook Corner >

Shiny New Book’s Review >

Desperate Reader’s Review >

My Custard Pie’s Review >

Extract on the Telegraph >

Article on Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) >

Try a few recipes

Belgian Buns over on the Telegraph >

Carrot cake with cashew topping on the Telegraph >

Chelsea Buns over on The Sunday Times >

3 recipes on the Otago Daily Times NZ >

COVID19 measures: Large outlets will send even outside the UK, for local delivery the independent book stores mentioned below have stock and are happy to send to you.

For sale at

Amazon UK and Waterstones UK

And Indie bookstores with in particular the following stores:

In the UK

Cookbookbake in Brighton (also shipping to you)

Warwick Books in Warwick (also shipping to you)

Toppings & Company in Edinburgh, Ely and Bath (also shipping to you)

Browsers Bookshop in Woodbury (delivers locally)

In Australia

Dymocks (@dymocksbooks:https://bit.ly/2REYCok
Readings (@readingsbooks) :https://bit.ly/34EU6LL
Booktopia (@booktopiabooks) :https://bit.ly/2K9rZuH

In United States

’Oats in the North, Wheat from the South’ Published with Murdoch books in Britain, Australia and New Zealand in April and the US later this year (with a different title: ‘The British Baking Book” and cover) with Weldon Owen.

San Fransisco: Omnivore Books @OmnivoreBooks

Los Angeles: Now Serving @nowservingla

Barnes & Noble

Lebanon

Papercup bookstore, Beirut

Selling the Dutch edition in Belgium

Luddites, Antwerpen (selling both EN and NL)

Boekhandel Novelle, Kortrijk

Paard Van Troje, Gent

Standaard Boekhandel

Fnac

A remedy for a dry throat: Papo Secos and Port

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Not long ago I travelled to the incredible Douro Valley in Portugal where I was a guest of the Symington family, a family business who owns several port and wine vineyards or ‘quinta’ in the region. Our focus this time was on Graham’s port, for whom I also hosted an event in my house this month.

We arrived in Porto at the location where all the barrels and bottels are resting. An impressive cellar with barrels and tall ‘foedre’ as far as the eye can see, on the side wall there are barred cells with vintage ports that date back to the early decades of the last century. In the air there is the smell of ageing wood, must and a deep dark scent of port wine.

After lunch and on our way to the Douro valley, we make a stop to experience the delights of the traditional ‘pastel de nata’ or custard tart paired with a 10 year old port. My travel companion, prolific pastry chef and chocolatier Joost Arijs and I are glued to the glass window that separates us from the pastel bakery. There is no way to keep someone with his profile and a Bake Off judge and author of several books on baking away from where the action is. We walk the steep streets of Porto slightly tipsy, the delayed flight and boozy lunch with port pairing certainly got to our heads, but since all of us have had busy lives at home, it is a welcome opportunity to unwind.

There is just a sigh of light left in the Douro Valley when we arrive at the calm riverside village. Dinner is traditional dried salted cod and the Symington family’s wines to go with it. On the table I spot the bread basket, something that makes me weak in the knees when done well. There are a couple of huge breads in there, looking like a baby’s bum. I stare at them but am so full with the late lunch, custard tarts and salted cod that I can’t even fit dessert in, let alone a baby’s bum sized bun.

The next morning I wake up from the light peeping through the shutters of my room in one of the Symington’s family homes. Opening the shutters on an early morning in a quiet house where everyone is still asleep, letting in the crisp air is like breathing in life itself and with the view over the vineyard that greeted me I had to stop and take it all in. Downstairs breakfast waited for us, with juice made from the oranges growing in the garden and a basket of buns to make me weak at the knees again. On my plate, a large baby’s bum bun, I tear the two halves apart and smear the crusty bread with butter… few things are better than the simple delight of good bread and good butter….

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The Great Prison Bake Off

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When in Bruges… (scroll down for Dutch)

A usual trip to Bruges would mean a walk by the romantic canals and then a beer and a plate of endives wrapped in ham in one of Belgium’s oldest traditional cafés.

But not on Tuesday, Tuesday my co-judge Herman Van Dender and our host Wim Opbrouck from Bake Off Flanders and I were invited by the inmates from the Drug-free wing of the prison of Bruges. Drug-free means these inmates have a history with drugs and want to stay clean, others just want to sit out their sentence in a drug-free environment, because the rest of the prison is full of drugs. Sadly there isn’t much that the prison can do about that, the drugs comes in with the visitors and there is no legal way of checking those who visit for carrying hidden drugs. Furthermore checking inmates is not without rules, regular urine checks or full naked body checks aren’t legal. Even though some of the inhabitants have done serious crimes, this doesn’t mean they are stripped of their human rights.

But at the drug-free wing where we were a guest last night, the prison is allowed to do regular checks because the inmates welcome it. The waiting list to get into this wing is long. Inmates who stay clean, get privileges and one of these privileges is that they are allowed to organise things together. Last week they did an Italian food competition, this week we are here to judge their baking skills.

The three of us are checked rigorously, it takes a while before I get through the metal detector since my hair contains about a hundred bobby pins. We then go on a photo for our badge and are walked to the drug-free wing by the prison’s psychologist Maarten; a cheerful tattoo covered guy in his twenties. I jokingly ask him if he used to be an inmate here, making fun of the prejudice that comes with peeps with tats….

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Victoria’s sandwich finger cakes for Marie Curie

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This week was Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday and in honour of her and to raise funds for charity, major kitchen brand Franke has asked me to create a cake for their Blooming Great Tea Party. The charity Marie Curie offers vital support to people suffering with cancer and Franke want to support the work they do by generating vital funds for them as well as awareness of the work they do. Cancer is the disease that has touched everyone in some way and while cancer research is of paramount importance, so is the care for those who suffer from it or are trying to recover.

In my Victorian cookbooks I noticed the first Sandwich cakes were made into individual finger portions so that’s what we chose for this charity tea party. What you can do is visit a Franke retailer near you which is hosting a Blooming Great Tea Party and have a nice finger sponge cake with a cuppa! You can find out which retailers are taking part by visiting www.franke.co.uk/charity.
If you can not make it to a tea party you can easily donate through this page www.justgiving.com/fundraising/frankeuk2019-mariecurie

For 32 small Victoria sponge finger cakes (recipe can be halved)

Needed: 1 or 2 non-stick baking tray size 39 x 27 cm

For the Cake

  • 4 eggs, weighed in their shell
  • same weight of: soft butter, caster sugar, self-raising flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tablespoon milk
  • butter for greasing
  • flower to dust
  • 2-3 tbsp raspberry or strawberry jam
  • 200 g double cream, whipped
  • fine white sugar, for sprinkling

For the filling

  • 100 g powdered sugar
  • 1 tbsp or 12 g custard powder (pudding powder)
  • 50 g of butter
  • 1 teaspoon milk, warm (or water)

Method

Make the filling by mixing powdered sugar, pudding powder, butter, milk or water and salt in the food processor until you get a cream. If it is much too dry, then add milk or water per ¼ teaspoon. Let the filling rest covered.

Preheat your oven to 180 ° C

Weigh the eggs in the shells to determine the quantities of butter, sugar and flour.

Put the eggs in a large mixing bowl, add soft butter, sugar, milk, self-raising flour and baking powder. Mix the batter until it is smooth.

Scoop the batter into the baking tray(s) and neatly smooth out using a scraper or spatula.

Place the tray in the center of your oven for 18-20 minutes. Leave to rest for 5 minutes, remove from the tray and allow to cool on a rack.

When making one tray, cut the cake with a serrated knife into eight, then cut each piece into 4 finger cakes and halve them so that the filling can be sandwiched in between.

When making two trays, simply cut the whole cake into fingers or for a quick method top the whole cake with jam and cream and then cut into fingers.

For creating individual fingers smear the bottom finger cake with jam, pipe or smear the cream on top and put the top cake on top.

During strawberry season it’s delicious to add slices of fresh strawberries to the filling.

Sprinkle with fine sugar.