Try these crowd-pleasing stuffed tomatoes, and a chocolate cake that really works, every time
WHEN I SEE sumptuous photos of Nigella's cakes and sweet treats, I feel more than a pang of jealousy. Downright hatred comes closer. It would be fair to say that my cake-baking attempts are disastrous. I would rather go down a coal-mine than get a weighing scales out and start measuring flour. In fact, up until recently, we never possessed one, so all cakes made before weighing scales purchase or BWSP, involved haphazard and wayward measurings of flour and sugar, ensuring all birthday "cakes" were a mass of stodgy, bland mush, never resembling the glossy picture on display. For last year's birthday celebrations, I vowed to find a chocolate cake that I could master. To be honest, trying to find a recipe for a plain and easy chocolate cake was pretty hard. I trawled through about 20 books and although variations on a theme included everything from ginger, Guinness and horseradish, I couldn't find a plain chocolate cake that didn't contain masses of vegetable oil or cocoa powder.
And then, just when I thought it was over, I opened up a very plain and lovely cook-book from the original green goddess: Alice Waters from Chez Panisse in California. She is the superb chef who once had the chutzpah to put a white peach on a plate in her restaurant, and serve it - untouched - as a dessert, the point being that it couldn't be improved upon. So I tried her chocolate cake recipe and tweaked it a bit for my own selfish taste-buds. It is much better served the day after it has been made, when it takes on a fudgey, rich dimension. If you are coeliac, feel free to replace the very small amount of flour with ground almonds, which is what we do in our itsa4 restaurant for a super-rich gluten free chocolate cake.
The other recipe is perfect fodder as a posh canape for both kids and grown-ups at parties. Our executive chef, Neil Shirt, made these within a few minutes, for a party we were catering recently. One of the guests was a vegetarian and coeliac, and was on a diet. None of the uber-rich canapes we were serving fitted the bill, but he whipped these up and they went down a treat. But don't bother making them unless you have gorgeously red and lovely looking cherry tomatoes. Stuffed anything is often considered the epitome of naffness in catering circles, but after one bite of these, you will be hooked. They are a bit tricky to make, but easy enough to master.
Stuffed cherry tomatoes
4 plum tomatoes
30 cherry tomatoes
10 Kalamata olives (stone in)
Few basil leaves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
ground black pepper
Maldon sea salt
Nip a tiny criss-cross (like a paper-cut) into the skin of the plum tomatoes at the stalk end. Dunk them in a cup or small bowl of boiling water (for 10-20 seconds) till the skin starts to peel off, then put them in a bowl of iced cold water, to cool them down and stop them going all mushy from the boiling water. Peel away the skin and chop up the flesh. If you want to be really swotty, slice them in half, remove the seeds by scooping out with a knife or spoon and just keep the outer flesh. But genuinely, it's good enough just to get the skin off.
Now, for the prep for your cherry tomatoes: Pretend you are a surgeon, then slice a small bit off the bottom of the tomato so it will stand still on a plate. Then, with the tip of a very sharp knife, cut a small cone-shaped cavity out of the top of the cherry tomatoes, and discard. You should only remove about a quarter of the inside of the cherry tomato. Try and do this super-gently as they will wrinkle and bruise and go all pappy if you man-handle them.
Buy the olives with the stone in, for better flavour. Cut the flesh away from the stone and chop it up very finely. Mix with the plum tomato flesh, some very finely chopped basil, the olive oil and pepper. Spoon back this mixture into the tomatoes and top with a few crystals of Maldon sea salt and a small bit of extra basil. Watch them get savaged, think of all your hard work, and feel what a Michelin star chef feels like. So much work, so little reward.
Rich chocolate cake
240g butter
270g dark chocolate
6 eggs, separated
250g sugar
120g flour, sieved
An extra couple of bars of milk or dark chocolate, broken into small squares (optional)
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius/gas four.Prepare a spring-back cake tin by rubbing it with some butter and then "flouring" the tin, by adding a small tablespoon of flour and moving the cake tin around in such a way as to evenly coat the butter with flour. Do it over a sink and tip out the excess flour.
Melt the butter and chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water. You must melt the chocolate slowly and gently.
Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until good and thick. Add the melted chocolate and mix well. Fold in the flour using a big metal spoon.
Beat the egg whites until frothy and forming soft peaks. Fold these into the cake mixture, and if you feel like being extra chocolatey, add the squares of extra chocolate.
Pour into prepared the cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes, or until sides of the cake are set, but the middle is still soft and glossy. Allow the cake to cool fully before removing from the tin, and serve with ginger and Baileys cream - whip 200ml of cream with one tablespoon of icing sugar, a good splash of Baileys and a half teaspoon of ground ginger.
