Victorian

Brighton Rock Cakes – from Oats in the North, my new book

31st March 2020 by Regula 1 Comment

Recipe and extract from Oats in the North, Wheat from the South, published with Murdoch Books and available here >

Usually these buns appear as ‘Rock cakes’ or ‘Rock buns’ in old cookery books, but in 1854 two recipes for Brighton rock cakes appeared in George Read’s The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker’s Assistant. Read gives a recipe for Brighton rock cakes and another for Brighton pavillions. The latter are made the same way as Brighton rock cakes, but are finished with a topping of currants and coarse sugar that, he says, should be ‘as large as a pea’.

You can still buy Brighton rock cakes in the seaside town of Brighton at the Pavilion Gardens Café. The open-air kiosk at Brighton Pavilion has been selling Brighton rock cakes since 1940, and possibly even longer if we look at Read’s recipe from 1854. Rock cakes are popular throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and often appear in literature. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Hagrid serves them to Harry and Ron, and Agatha Christie also mentions them in more than one novel.

I wanted to share this recipe in publication week of my new book Oats in the North, Wheat from the South because currently I am missing the sunny Brighton beach, the buzzing pier, and the busy Brighton lanes with its independent shop walhalla. I miss the days without worry when we drove over to the UK for a weekend, antiquing, walking, eating… When the Corona crisis is over I’m planning a trip, but I wonder how we will feel post Corona, will we be free of worry or will the way we live change?

But for now, we can bake, do join my #bakecorona on social media.

This recipe only uses one egg, in a time when eggs are dear this recipe might be a solution, other recipes from the book which can be handy during shortages are the Soda bread – to save yeast, the Parkin – to save sugar, the Cornish Heavy cake NO eggs at all, Yorkshire parkin – just oat flour needed, the fat rascalls – just 1 egg needed, Swiss roll – no baking powder but lots of eggs, Flapjack – uses just oats or leftover muesli. And to save an egg, I use an egg less in my pound cake! Happy baking…

This recipe for Brighton rock cakes contains candied cedro, but most rock cakes only contain currants, so you can easily leave it out.

Recipe from Oats in the North, Wheat from the South, published with Murdoch Books and available here >

For 6 rock cakes

225 g plain (all-purpose) flour
100 g raw cane (demerara) sugar or white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tbsp mixed spice
pinch of sea salt
75 g chilled butter, diced
1 egg
3 tbsp full-fat milk
50 g currants
30 g candied cedro (optional)
3 glacé cherries, halved, to garnish (optional)
nibbed sugar, to garnish (optional)

Method

Preheat your oven to 200°C (400°F) and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, mixed spice and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour mixture until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs.

Stir in the egg, then add enough milk to bring the dough together without making it too wet. If the dough is too dry to press together, add a teaspoon of milk. Fold the currants and candied cedro through the dough. Form six rock cakes using two forks – this will help achieve a rugged, rocky look. Place on the baking tray and decorate with the cherries and sugar, if using. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes until the rock cakes have a golden blush.

Jaune Mange

2nd January 2020 by Regula 4 Comments

Jaune Mange jelly is the yellow sister to the ancient delicacy called Blanc Mange which means ‘white food’. It is one of the most international early dishes of European cuisine. From the Middle Ages onwards the name of this dish in its various forms – blanc mange, blanc manger, blamange, manjar branco, biancomangiare – can be found in most European cookery books.

It is believed by many food historians that the earliest recipe for blancmange dates back to the twelfth century. Two recipes for blancmange also feature in the earliest English cookery text, The Forme of Cury from C1390. By 1395, two recipes for blancmange can be found in the Viandier manuscripts, the first French cookbook: one is a dish for the sick, the other is a multicoloured dish, which is at odds with the name’s literal meaning.

This recipe uses seville orange juice, while others recommend lemon and lemon peel for flavour and colour. Later recipes by J.H. Walsh in The British Cookery Book (1864) instruct the cook to use sherry or ‘raisin-wine’. Because the eggs give this jaune mange a set already, you don’t need to use as much gelatine as you would for a blancmange.`…

Figgy Pudding for my ‘National Trust Book of Puddings’

24th November 2019 by Regula 4 Comments

Today is Stir-up sunday and the most important day on the pudding calendar. Today is the day to prepare the Christmas pudding, or plum pudding. Why this should be done a month before Christmas is something I’ve written about in a previous posting here and in my book Pride and Pudding. But this year I wanted to give you an alternative to the traditional plum pud.

A figgy pudding is just another name for a plum pudding – and both of them generally refer to puddings made with raisins or currants and no figs at all. However there have been recipes for figgy pudding in the late 19th century, but those recipes did refer to puddings made with figs and didn’t give a recipe for plum pudding. Using dried figs, this results in a dark and luxurious winter pudding. Why not have this as your pudding on Christmas day for a change this year?

This is a recipe from my little book the ‘National Trust Book Of Puddings‘ which was published in april (2019)….

Francatelli’s Queen Victoria and Albert Pudding

20th February 2017 by Regula 9 Comments

Although spring is in the air at times and daffodils are showing their sunny faces hear and there, some days are still reminding us it is still winter. On cold grey days like these the central heating never seems to give enough warmth although the thermometer says otherwise. Baking seems to be the only antidote to dreary weather and puddings might just be the most fitting with their warming and filling character.

Puddings it is and although I have just published a 378 page book on the history of pudding… which was recently shortlisted for a prestigious André Simon Award (still pinching myself, and although I didn’t win, I am still chuffed to bits!), there are still so many pudding recipes left to boil, bake, steam, fry or freeze. Today I’m taking you to the Victorian era, when puddings were at the height of their splendour.

During Queen Victoria’s reign Britain was going through a period of industrial evolution and urbanisation. It was also a period of peace and stability. The 19th century saw the birth of the rail network with the steam locomotive as the greatest invention. This made for an enormous change in farming as food could now be transported to the towns more quickly and efficiently. On the land a lot of jobs had been replaced by new farming machines, techniques changed, unemployment and poverty rose as the population almost doubled. With more people moving to cities in search for work, demand for produce was high.

The contrast between the lives of the working class and the splendour in which the Queen lived was enormous. Victoria became queen in 1837 at the age of 18 but before that she lived in Kensington Palace which was at that time in quite a state of disrepair.

We know her mostly from her iconic photograph, in profile, dressed in black mourning clothes, looking stern and cold. She is the matriarch, the embodiment of a strong and powerful woman. But in reality she mourned the death of Prince Albert for the rest of her life and found it hard without him.

To know the story behind the portrait, the story of the woman, the queen and the widow, we were treated to an historical drama titled simply ‘Victoria’ recently. And this is the reason for this posting today. ‘Victoria’ is airing in America in March and that is why for the launch TV station KCTS9 and author Laurel Nattress asked me to recreate a pudding for Victoria and her husband Albert from a recipe by the queen’s then chef Charles Elmé Francatelli….

Stir-up Sunday, History and Plum pudding

18th November 2016 by Regula 5 Comments

Let me start with blowing my own trumpet, it’s my blog so I’m allowed! I’m pleased to have tracked down a copy of Delicious Magazine while in Budapest because in it they have elected my book Pride and Pudding as one of the best books of 2016! After the hard work creating this book I am of course flattered and beyond happy to get this kind of news! So thank you again Delicious Magazine UK!!

Now on to the news of the day!

This weekend will mark the last Sunday before advent which is traditionally Stir-up Sunday. According to (rather recent) tradition, plum pudding or Christmas pudding should be made on this day. It is a custom that is believed to date back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer (though it is actually not); where a reading states ‘stir up, we beseech thee’. The words would be read in church on the last Sunday before Advent and so the good people knew it was time to start on their favourite Christmas treat.

It was a family affair: everyone would gather to stir the pudding mixture from east to west, in honour of the Three Kings who came from the east. Sometimes coins or trinkets would be hidden in the dough; finding them on Christmas Day would bring luck and good fortune.

There are a lot of legends and claims made about the origins of the plum pudding. Some say it was King George I who requested plum pudding as a part of the first Christmas feast of his reign, in 1714. George I was christened ‘the Pudding King’ because of this myth but there are no written records prior to the twentieth century to tell us that this king deserved this title.

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Bakewell puddings and Bakewell tarts

2nd October 2016 by Regula 5 Comments

It was Bakewell tart on Great British Bake Off ~~yesterday~~ last week! And when Mary said this is what a Bakewell tart should look like… I had to disagree. Traditionally early Bakewell tarts did not have a topping of icing. Nor do they have that lonesome cherry which we associate with cheap shop bought mini-bakewell tarts. Mary’s Bakewell tart didn’t have the cherry but did have the icing with a fancy pattern. It looked the part, don’t get me wrong, but if you visit the town of Bakewell you will see that proud Bakewell tart bakers clearly state that they do not add icing to their Bakewell tarts as icing is not part of the original recipe… But what is the original recipe? When does it stop or start being original? It’s a tough question.

And then there’s that other Bakewell bake… The Bakewell pudding!

Imagine a pub in a quintessentially English village: you enter with an appetite and the special on the menu is a pudding named after that village. You just have to try it, don’t you? And so the Bakewell pudding rose to fame. Even though Wonders of the Peak, the first travel guide to the Peak District, was written by Charles Cotton in 1681, tourism reached a high in Victorian times, helped by the development of the railway and an increasing interest in geology. Victorians also came to ‘take the waters’ in the spa towns of Buxton, Matlock Bath and Bakewell….

Queen cakes – 18th century dainty bakes

11th June 2016 by Regula 9 Comments

It is not a coincidence that I chose to write about Queen cakes today. If you’ve read the papers and watched the news, or if you are a royalist, then you know today the Queen of England celebrates her 90th birthday. This makes her the world’s oldest-reigning monarch and the longest reigning monarch in English history. Queen Victoria was the previous record holder with her 63 years and seven months. So Queenie has every reason to be smug and have a big party – which is a giant street picnic on the Mall (the strap of wide street in front of Buckingham palace) in june. Getting a ticket for it was near impossible to my regret, because this was a celebration I would have been happy to buy a new hat for, bunting I already have aplenty. So if you’re reading this Your Majesty… is there room for one more? I’ll throw in a book!

But let’s talk about these Queen cakes. They are little cakes, and they started popping up in English cookery books in the 18th century. When reading the several recipes from the 18th to the 20th century I have in original cookery books, they remind me of a little cake I grew up with in Belgium. However, the recipe was slightly different as the Belgian cakes were flavoured with a little vanilla or almond essence, while Queen cakes are flavoured with mace, orange flower water, rose water and lemon depending on the date of the recipe. The Belgian cakes also look more like Madeleines, but they both have currants in them and the use of vanilla or almond essence is of course a slightly more ‘modern’ way to flavour bakes.

As with many English dishes, the Queen cakes come with their own dedicated cake pans. These were produced in the 19th century and depictions of them can be found in at least two books that I know of, one I own. 18th century recipes remain silent about the tins they should be baked in, but it is very possible that the then fashionable mince pie tins would have been used, leaving them without a need to create new tins….

Cabinet Pudding – Or what to do with stale cake and booze

27th April 2016 by Regula 4 Comments

Let me share with you a recipe from Pride and Pudding, my debut book that was festively launched in London’s Borough Market two weeks ago. There is also good news if you haven’t ordered the book yet! The Amazon editorial team has not only included Pride and Pudding in their ‘Books of the Month’ – this week it is also part of their ‘Deal of the Week’ which comes with a 50% discount only this week. (Get it here >) Meaning it will only set you back a tenner! It looks like sales are going splendid as I haven’t seemed to have lost my spot in the first 10 of the top 100 Bestsellers. As an author you do fear no one will buy your book. As do you fear bad reviews and negativity. So if you have a moment and you like the book, Amazon reviews do make a difference.

Now back to the actual order of the day. Cabinet pudding was a favourite on Victorian tables, the first recipes for it appeared in the early 19th century, though similar puddings had been made long before then. It is also sometimes called Newcastle pudding, diplomat pudding or Chancellor’s pudding, though the connection with politics isn’t clear. Recipes also vary. There are theories about the name but none seemed to hold much truth to them….

Kedgeree and… my first video!

8th December 2013 by Regula 12 Comments

I have something very exciting to share with you… my first ever video!!!
During the summer I was contacted by the guys from Grokker, a new online video network. They wanted me on board for a challenge with Loyd Grossman and because I had never really considered doing video, I thought this would be the perfect moment to get some experience in that area.
Although I was very tired after only 3 hours sleep and nervous of answering questions while trying to explain a recipe in a language other than my own without any form of rehearsal I must say I’m quite happy with how it turned out. The film crew really was a fabulous bunch of people. -Thanks guys- The video here is a trailer, the whole thing is on Grokker here > for which you have to create an account to see it – and if you do… don’t forget to click on the heart below the video to let me know you liked what I did there! 🙂 It’s a bit of a challenge with a few other fabulous blogger involved, check them out while you are there too.

A small -delicate- detail though… my name isn’t pronounced like you can hear in the video, so please don’t all start calling me ‘Regoela’ it’s more like ‘regular’ without the ‘R’ at the end and a more delicate ‘G’ like in Italian. It is Latin after all. 🙂
Anyway back to the dish, we had to choose a typical main dish of our niche that was able to be cooked in 30 min, prep to finish. So I choose Kedgeree, a recent favourite in our house.

Kedgeree is believed to find its origin in the Indian dish called Khichri and we can say it is the the first Anglo-Indian fusion food. During the British Raj, the Brits in India were craving a dish that would remind them of home.   Khichri is considered a sick person’s food in India, being less spicy and easier on the digestive system than other curries. It was perfect for the Britons who were still spice-shy back then and couldn’t take the heat of a curry like they do today.

But the British like to tweak recipes, so they added protein where as in an original Khichri there was none. The colonials added fish and eggs and embraced it as a breakfast dish. But why a breakfast dish, firstly because the Brits are used to protein rich breakfasts but also because the heat in India made it so the fish had to be eaten for breakfast in order to keep it from spoiling. This means that the original Kedgeree was made with fresh fish rather than with smoked fish.
Back in Britain the Victorians loved kedgeree and the novelty feel it had. It was perfect for the fancy breakfast table and a change from the usual.

How the smoked fish, came into the equation is another story.
It is generally believed that the arrival of kedgeree in Britain in the 18th century coincided with the introduction of a stagecoach from the Scottish village of Findon to Edinburgh and then further south. Findons’ cottage industry was the smoking of haddock and Kedgeree was the perfect way to balance the fish’s strong salty flavour with ingredients like rice and hard-boiled eggs.

Below is an explanation of Kedgeree from Colonel A. R. Kenney-Herbert, Wyvern’s Indian Cookery Book – 1869

 “Kedgeree (khichri) of the English type is composed of boiled rice, chopped hard-boiled egg, cold minced fish, and a lump of fresh butter: these are all tossed together in the frying pan, flavoured with pepper, salt, and any minced garden herb such as cress, parsley, or marjoram, and served in a hot dish.  The Indian khichri of fish is made like the foregoing with the addition of just enough turmeric powder to turn the rice a pale yellow colour, and instead of garden herbs the garnish is composed of thin julienne-like strips of chilli, thin slices of green ginger, crisply fried onions, etc.” 

Eliza Acton uses not hard-boiled but raw eggs to create a Carbonara type of sauce and Elisabeth David adds a lot of spices and raisins. My version is something in between the recipes of these clever ladies and the gentleman above, my eggs are boiled semi runny and I only use cayenne pepper as a seasoning. The smoked haddock gives enough flavour to make this dish an excellent comfort food, or as I’m told it works wonders for a hangover!

What do you need
• 400 g smoked haddock
• 500 ml water
• 2 sjallots
• 150 g basmati rice
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 3 eggs, boiled semi runny or hard boiled if you prefer – shell removed
• sea salt to taste
• a pack of butter, unsalted
• fresh parsley, chopped

method
Bring the water to a boil in a deep pan with a lid, ad the fish and make sure it is completely covered and simmer – not boil – for about 10 minutes or until flaky
Remove the fish from the pan – keeping the liquid aside – transfer to a warmed dish and cover
Add the rice to the pan with the cooking liquid, cover with the lid and bring back to the boil for 10 minutes and regularly stirring the rice. Keep the lid on.
Now flake the fish into bitesize pieces using a teaspoon
Remove the shells from the eggs and cut up one of the eggs and leave the other two whole
After 10 minutes, turn down the flame and leave the rice covered with the lid until needed.
Heat a generous amount of good quality butter in a large deep pan, add the finely chopped shallots and glaze while stirring
Now ad a large knob of butter and ad the cayenne pepper, the rice and the fish with a generous pinch of salt.
Stir well so the pepper colors the rice an add two eggs, cut in pieces before stirring a last time.
Get your warmed serving plate out, transfer the food to the plate and halve the last boiled egg to put on top as decoration.
Finish of with the chopped parsley

A great dish for using up leftover rice or fish, it can be made with any kind of white fish or even prawns. Serve with a side salad to ad some vegetables to the mix.
Some people like it with mango chutney but I find it too sweet.
Drink with a nice IPA beer.

So jealous of those wheels!

Hopping down in Kent – Hop brandy

15th November 2013 by Regula 4 Comments

While driving through the rolling Kentish countryside I can’t help but shout out ‘Oast house’ when I spot the somewhat fairytale like conical rooftops of the hop kilns. I nurture my inner child with my endless enthusiasm for things other people might not even notice anymore.

These monuments of agricultural industrialisation were used for drying the freshly picked green hop flowers. They usually had two or three storeys, some with perforated floors on which the hops were spread out. On the ground flour was a charcoal-fired oven spreading warm air through the kiln which is permitted to pass through the perforated floors to dry the hops. The white wooden cowl on the roof rotates with the wind to allow air to circulate and moisture to escape to prevent mould. Although we are more used to seeing round Oast houses, the kilns started out square shaped. The earliest example dates back to the mid 1700’s and can be found in Cranbrook.

Hops
have been grown in Britain since the the late 15th century and probably
even earlier. They were introduced to Britain from Flanders where
hopped beer had become the fashion. Hops don’t only add bitterness to
beer but also act as a natural preservative. In the early Victorian era
hop growing became the most important industry in Kent as tastes changed
from un-hopped ale to more bitter beer.
The
need for hops was especially great due to the late Georgian law
forbidding the use of any other ingredients than hops and malt in beer. A
year after the law was approved, the drum roaster -used to roast malt-
was invented by Daniel Wheeler. By roasting the malt the brewers could
legally give extra flavouring and colouring to the beer by creating very
dark, roasted malt for the use in Porters and Stouts.

Of course those large amounts of hops needed to be picked and so each september the destitute families from London and sometimes even further away, came ‘hopping down to Kent’. If they were not completely pennyless, they could afford the ticket for the ‘Hop pickers Special’ train which left from London Bridge. If they were too poor, they had to walk to Kent. For six weeks they would live on site in hop huts to help with the hop harvest. Although the work was rough, it was a time especially the children looked forward to all year. Hop picking in Kent was a welcome change from the slums is which most of these families lived. And although the hop huts were far from luxury, it was still a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the miserable fog in London. Most of the time it would only be the woman and children who came to pick the hops. Unless if they were unemployed, the men stayed behind in the cities and worked at their jobs in the factories and the docks. The money the woman earned by hop picking was often the only pot of money they could truly manage themselves. Back in the city they would be lucky if their husbands wages weren’t spent on ale every payday.

Hop picking in Kent in this way continued until far in the 1960s, even after the introduction of the first machines. To this day, hop pickers still arrive in the Kentish hop gardens by the beginning of autumn, although now they come from much further places usually Eastern Europe. British labourers are too expensive to hire and usually don’t want to do the work. Hop picking is now far from the ‘Londoners’ holiday’ it was ones considered.

To have a peek in a hop garden, stay tuned for my next post where I will also be cooking with hops.

Today I bring you Hop brandy, a drink not very historical as I haven’t been able to find any reference to it in my books and online. It was my teacher in beer class who told us he brews a bottle of hop brandy once and a while and I got intrigued.
It’s is not safe to brew beer from wild hops, hops need to be tested for certain compounds to be ok to brew with.

Hop brandy

What do you need

Hops, I used Kentish Goldings, enough to fill your bottle of choice
A bottle of Eau de vie, Jenever or another flavourless grain alcohol

Method

Finding your hops will be trickiest part, I used beautiful Kentish Goldings which I ordered from a farm. Let me know if you need the email address of the hop farm. 200 grams left me with quite a large bag.
Back to the recipe, sort out the prettiest flowers and put them in your bottle all the way to the top.
Fill the bottle completely, leave to mature for a few months.

You might also enjoy
Raspberry vinegar >
Sloe Gin >
Damson cheese >
Cobnut Brandy >

Victorian

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