I enjoy cooking with my daughter Jess, although it is unusual for us to find time to have a cooking session nowadays. She is a chef in a local pub and on her days off is not often in the mood for long cooking sessions with her mother! I managed to tempt her with this enticing-looking recipe for Blackberry Doughnuts in BBC Good Food Magazine. Personally I give doughnuts a wide berth if commerically made, but home-made they are completely different.
Cooked Doughnuts
Rosie Birkett includes a recipe for quick blackberry jam for filling these doughnuts, and suggests serving them with Bay Leaf Custard. In the end we went for home-made vanilla custard, and I had one serving with a portion of Strawberry Ice-cream with Balsamic Vinegar (a Delia Smith favourite recipe of mine).
Home-made Blackberry Jam
Jess, my daughter, insists on having a proper deep-fat fryer, so we had to give that a good clean up before using it; I don’t like the stickiness of fryers, so insist on keeping it in the shed!
Cooked and Filled Blackberry Doughnuts
We did find that it was difficult to get the frying temperature right for cooking the doughnuts all the way through but not burnt on the outside, despite heating the oil to the suggested temperature of 180 degrees C. In the end, we put them in the oven for about 7 minutes, after frying them.
The verdict was positive all round, and we would definitely make these doughnuts again, maybe using different varieties of home-made or good-quality bought jam to suit the seasons. We were lucky enough to have some freshly-picked blackberries for making the jam.
The other recipe I made from Rosie’s selection was Slow-cooked Marrow with fennel and Tomato. I love marrow, although many people seem to either treat it as a joke or a burden, or an over-grown courgette. I do think that stuffed marrow is good, but that it is great to ring the changes, having marrow as a side dish or main course vegetarian dish. Rosie describes this dish as a little like caponata. She serves it with some sourdough bread and soft goats’ cheese. On this occasion I left out the bread and cheese, but I think that it would be great served in this way as a first course.
I have no photo of my version of this dish, so you will just have to imagine it! I shall be making the other dishes featured in this article sometime soon: Braised Squid with Fennel and Tomatoes , Devilled Prawns and Corny Polenta and Cacio e Pepe with Runner Beans.
I am seriously tempted to buy Rosie’s book, which is featured below. She uses seasonal, fresh produce and simple store cupboard ingredients.