Oh, I know we’ve done crumble almost to death recently, but a couple of weeks ago I had some late rhubarb (one of the few redeeming features of the cold, wet Seattle spring we’ve been having) and made that most quintessentially English delight – a rhubarb crumble.

And, not a just any old crumble either, but a slightly adjusted Rhubarb & Amaretti Crumble, courtesy of dear old Delia Smith, the doyenne of English cooking.  Which ended up being just about the most fabulous crumble I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Ingredients

Approx 10 sticks of rhubarb

4 tbsps water

6 tbsps caster/baker’s sugar (or to taste).

Crumble Topping

40g chilled butter

75g self raising flour (or plain/all purpose flour with 1/2 tsp baking powder)

50g demerara sugar

50g whole almonds

4 Virginia Amaretti biscuits.

Unfortunately I forgot to measure out everything in cup measures, but if you use the proportions of dried ingredients  to butter to sugar that I give here then you should be OK.

Method

Unlike Delia I stewed the cleaned and chopped rhubarb beforehand in the sugar and water for about ten minutes until soft, just because that’s how I’ve also always done it. I also didn’t add ginger  because I wanted the full flavour of the Amaretti to come through (also, truth be told, because I’m not very fond of it).  But feel free to add a teaspoon of ginger or cardamom at this stage and follow Delia’s method for cooking the fruit in the recipe link above.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C /350 degrees F /Gas Mark 4

Then put all the crumble topping ingredients into the food processor and whizz until crumbled.

Pat the crumble ingredients down over the stewed fruit and bake in the oven for around 35 mins until slightly golden round the edges and dig in.  Normally I like crumble served slightly warm, but this was fabulous spooned up straight out of the fridge.

That’s it for the moment folks. On Sunday evening we’re off on our three-week European grand tour – a week on the French Riviera, a few days in Provence, a couple of days in Paris and a week in London, meeting friends, godparents and family along the way. There won’t be any proper bloggery while I’m away, but I’ll try and post up some ‘Postcards from Europe’ so you can vicariously join us on our travels.  Don’t miss me too much.

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A week or two ago I was lucky enough to be invited with a host of other Seattle foodbloggers to meet Mireille Guiliano, the extremely petite and chic (that’s her on the right below) author of ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’  who was promoting her new cookbook ‘The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook’, who has been one of my foodie heroines for the longest time.

Her books are full of good sense about eating only delicious food, eating slowly and deliberately, eating exactly what you want to eat but only in small portions, eating a good breakfast and balancing each meal between carbs, proteins and fats. She exercises by walking and doing yoga, and she looks… incredible.

For Mireille cooking can’t be separated from the joy of eating and her cookbook is a delight, full of charming anecdotes about the role food plays in Mireille’s life, making it definitely a cookbook for the bedside table.

It’s also full of recipes which aren’t really diet food, but which are rich and flavoursome and for which a little goes a long way. Her recipe for Chocolate Madeleines is a case in point. Six tablespoons of butter sounds like a lot, but not so much when spread between twenty madeleines, and just one of these is light and fluffy and decadent enough to satisfy any chocolate craving.

Ingredients

3 1/2 oz  (100g) of dark chocolate

6 tbsps unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup plus 3 tbsps all-purpose/plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

(I also added 1/2 tsp salt, because I like what salt does to sweet things, and 1 tsp of vanilla essence).

Method

Combine the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water and melt, stirring until smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat and leave to cool.

Sift together the flour and baking powder and reserve.

Whisk the eggs until frothy, gradually add the sugar and continue whisking until the mixture is pale yellow and has thickened.

Gently fold in the cooled chocolate-butter mixture until well combined. Then gently fold in the flour until just combine. Then cover the mixture and chill it in the fridge for 3 hours.

Thoroughly butter your madeleine tin, which is an excellent job for small fingers, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

Spoon the chilled batter into the madeleine pans until they’re three-quarters full.

The mixture will be quite thick and cold at this point, so don’t make the mistake I did with my first batch of these and not spread them right into the crevasses of the madeleine shapes. I’d expected the mixture to spread while cooking, but it didn’t enough and my first batch were very misshapen.

Bake for 11-13 minutes until puffy. Do not overbake.  Cool on a rack and serve either slightly warm or at room temperature. Eat and marvel at how much slimmer you’re feeling ALREADY.

Things have been all over the place this week because of my computer problems, but I’m intending to make Wednesday ‘ Recipe of the Week’  day – where I play at being a food stylist  – going forward. Thanks to Keren at Frantic Foodie for organising the coffee morning and do check out Mireille’s excellent website which is full of ways to keep slim the French way. Oh and you can buy the Atelier LZC tea towel I used above from mirrormirror.

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A couple of weeks ago I did another photography workshop with Lara Ferroni, this time talking about food photography in low lighting conditions.

I take all my photographs in natural light, as I don’t even possess a flashgun for my camera, but after getting the opportunity to play with Lara’s flash rig and huge studio lights I was busily working out how I could afford to buy all sorts of gear to counteract the Seattle gloom. (The answer, in case you’re wondering, is that I can’t. Not for the moment anyway.)

But it was all super interesting and gave us another opportunity to style and photograph the dishes that Lara had prepared, including the most delicious radish risotto, the recipe for which will be coming up in the next week or two.

Here are some of my favourite shots from the session.

Not surprisingly we spend a lot of time discussing light and shadows in Lara’s workshops. These tomato and lemon photos used the same continuous studio lights, but for the ones on the right I used a ‘bounce’ of white polystyrene to soften the shadows.  I actually like these pictures equally but it’s interesting to see how something so simple can totally change the ‘mood’.

Yep, I know it’s completely out of focus, but for some reason I really like this shot.

This radish risotto was SO good.

There are more photos here on my Flickr. As part of my increased commitment to photography I’m going to try and post more stuff up there. Do feel free to make me a ‘contact’ on there – I’d love to see your photos.

I also can’t recommend Lara’s workshops highly enough if you have any interest in still-life photography (not just food). I can’t wait to apply some of my new techniques to mirrormirror product shots.

I’m also going to take the time to practise food styling at home. Henceforth on the blog there will be a weekly recipe, which I’ll take the time to style and shoot as best I can. Coming up on Wednesday, chocolate madeleines!

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