This honey cake originated in Germany in the Middle Ages, and became a staple of the Jewish kitchen, finding a place as the traditional cake of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It symbolises a hope for a sweet and fruitful new year. Many dismiss honey cake as one of those traditional staples that simply [...]
Leanne Kitchen’s Turkey has a piece in it about baklava, but no recipe. Kitchen declined to include one, because baklava is one of those things that’s best done professionally, by people who make it all the time, using those generations-old recipes and techniques that will live forever. Reading that did give me pause for thought, but [...]
Ginger is a common flavour in lots of cakes and biscuits, but the way it gets there is usually through the use of dried and ground ginger. Fresh ginger is more normally used as one of the first things in the pan at the bottom of an Asian or Chinese dish. In its dried form, [...]
They look so complicated, with their elegant crescent shape and proudly airy layers of rich pastry, tightly curled up and falling over one another. Breaking one open sends a shower of buttery flakes everywhere and leaves your fingers satisfyingly greasy. Surely, this type of baking is the preserve of the professional? Or the French? But, [...]
A while ago, I spent some time in India, travelling around Rajasthan and the north of the country. We ended up in the town of Jaiselmer, deep in the Rajasthani scrublands, a place that feels like the very edge of the world. The big tourist thing to do in Jaiselmer is to hire a guide [...]