Simple food pleasures
Old Welsh gingerbread recipe
Food shouldn’t be complicated. One thing that often annoys me about going to restaurants is when your plate arrives just a bit too well put together, too (as my Nan would have said) messed about with. It looks pretty, for sure, but knowing someone (albeit a very good chef) has handled each individual slice of potato to stack it so perfectly into a tower seems rather a lot of unneeded fuss. I’m not saying that elaborate dishes aren’t spectacular and they absolutely do have a place at (and on) the table, but food doesn’t have to be fancy to be fabulous. Now, I would happily eat out every night of the week, but every so often I still get great joy from coming home and devouring beans on toast while watching A Place In The Sun.
A lady in the choir I sing with once delighted in telling me that she’d visited a different supermarket to her usual and found Parson’s cockles on the shelf. She treated herself to a jar, went home, sat in her armchair – jar in one hand, fork in another – and savoured each one as she fished it out if the briny vinegary liquid. Simple food pleasures are just that – pleasures – and they should be enjoyed without guilt or remorse.
Simple food pleasures are different for everyone: a warm-off-the-bakestone Welsh cake and a cuppa, a dippy egg and soldiers, or perhaps a crispy roast potato dipped in some leftover gravy. For me, it’s a crisp sandwich. There’s something deeply satisfying about the pillowy soft bread against the harsh crunch of crisps. Something about the familiarity of fishing out a rogue bit of crisp lodged in your gum while simultaneously trying to prize a layer of bread from the roof of your mouth. Something about the nostalgia of crisp sandwiches past. And something about the sheer simplicity of bread and crisps coming together to create something divinely more than the sum of its parts.
I say it’s simple, but there are rules in Ross’s crisp sandwich world of bliss. Namely, the bread needs to be from a white sliced loaf (the kind that would stop the gluten-averse dead in their tracks), it must be buttered thickly with salty butter, and the crisps must be either salt and vinegar, cheese and onion or ready salted, and they should be precariously forced in in such quantity that you get one almighty crunch when you finally clamp it firmly between your fingers to eat.
Crisp sandwiches always remind me of days at Newton Beach in Porthcawl. My brother and I would be building sandcastles or playing in the rock pools and Mum would call to say it was time to eat. She would then dish out bags for crisps while my Nan carefully distributed the bread – bread she had pre-buttered and cut into half rounds and then put back into the plastic bread bag buttered face to buttered face. We’d wash it down with a bottle of Panda pop or a cup of tea from a flask. Food with no fuss and oh so perfectly pleasurable.
Let me know what your simple food pleasure is by tweeting me @rosswclarke
The Recipe
Old Welsh Gingerbread
Cold weather calls for warm spices, whether that’s clove-laden mulled cider, fiery chilli con carne, or peppery mace-spiced faggots and peas. One of my favourite warming flavours has to be ginger (who doesn’t love a ginger-infused hot toddy?) and I am forever adding more than any recipe dictates for that dragon’s breath feeling. However, this gingerbread recipe is quite the opposite, as it actually contains no ginger at all. Trawling through Welsh recipe books, it comes up time and time again and every time it is called gingerbread, which is a complete misnomer. Many books state that it was a favourite at Welsh county fairs and fetes in years gone by. The remarkable thing is… it takes like ginger. Not strongly, but it’s definitely there, I promise.
Ingredients (makes one small loaf cake)
125g butter
175 black treacle
75g dark brown sugar
50g caster sugar
150ml milk
50g mixed peel
375g self-raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
Method
Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 2/150°C/300°F and line a small loaf tin with non-stick parchment paper.
In a large saucepan, gently heat the butter, treacle, sugars and milk until melted and dissolved.
Remove the pan from the heat and tip in the mixed peel.
Sift in the flour and bicarb and give everything a really good mix to combine.
Pour the batter-like mix into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for around one hour until cooked through and a skewer comes out clean. If you feel it’s browning too much on top while cooking you can cover with foil.
Leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin before lifting out and leaving to cool completely on a cooling rack.
Cut into thick slices and enjoy with a cuppa.
This is also good (surprise, surprise) spread with butter. I’ll leave you to judge if it tastes gingery. If you do want more of a ginger kick, you can always add a teaspoon of ground ginger at the same time as you add the flour.
Don’t forget to tag any photos with #mywelshkitchen if you decide to give the recipe a go.
The Playlist
To me, cooking and music go hand in hand, whether that’s singing at the top of your voice using a wooden spoon as a microphone while waiting for pasta to boil, or dancing around with the oven gloves on as the oven timer counts down. Here are this week’s ideas for your Welsh Kitchen playlist.
Two very different songs this week. Firstly, one from Sir Tom Jones’s forthcoming album, which is somewhat unusual (pun very much intended) as it’s a sort of spoken comment on society put to music. The second is from a Welsh artist Bright Light Bright Light (real name Rod Thomas) who lives in New York. It’s a bit of 80’s-style electro-pop to get you bopping around the kitchen.
Talking Reality Television Blues by Tom Jones
Do You Dream About Me by Bright Light Bright Light
The Pantry
Good food is nothing without good ingredients and thankfully there are plenty of fantastic Welsh products on the market. Here is where you’ll find recommendations to stock up your cupboard, fridge or fruit bowl.
Daffodil Hot Sauce
I love a bit of heat, and a splash of Tabasco or Sriracha never goes amiss with me to liven up a dish. So, I was delighted to come across Daffodil Hot Sauce recently. Made in Wales as a passion project by a guy called Cai – who’s also head chef at The Brass Beetle in Cardiff – the range of completely vegan and gluten-free sauces includes Carolina Reaper, Charred Pineapple and Ginger, and Fermented Scotch Bonnet and Apricot Hot Sauce. Head to the website to see the whole range, buy your favourite, and support this frightfully spicy start-up.