Cookbook Club at Home: Dark Rye and Honey Cake

COOKBOOK CLUB at home

DARK RYE AND HONEY CAKE BY REGULA YSEWIJN

COOKBOOK CLUB at home

ANGELA CLUTTON

The Borough Market Cookbook Club has broken out of the Market gates and into members’ homes.

Since March 2016, we have been gathering together to share a love of good food, good cookbooks and good company. Friendships have been forged, shopping and cooking tips swapped, and encouragement given over literally thousands of dishes that Cookbook Club members have cooked at home and brought along to share with others.

As members, you now have the opportunity to create your own Borough Market Cookbook Club events at home, and in your own communities. Each month, I choose a cookbook to be the focus of that period’s Cookbook Club at Home gatherings. These are a mix of new books and old faithfuls; ones you know well, and amazing discoveries yet to be made. We send out an online pack that includes a simple guide to hosting, a synopsis of the book and its author, and (where possible) a couple of recipes.

One of the many exciting aspects of doing this is that every single event, wherever it takes

place, has its own distinct personality. Our hope is that people will bring along food to share from the chosen cookbook, and that the emphasis will be on exchanging thoughts, experiences and opinions on cooking from the book. The Cookbook Club has always been about the joy of cooking and sharing –it has never been a cooking competition!

That sense of exchange is essential. We want you to share on social media the build-up to your event and what happens at it. Your Cookbook Club at Home stories, photos, videos, tips, culinary triumphs (or even disasters..!) – we want them all.

The Borough Market Cookbook Club at Home is a great way to gather together friends and family. Whether they’re experienced cooks or novices, all they need in common is a love of food. New friends will be made as food does what food always does, and the Borough Market Cookbook Club does what it always has: brings people together.

Read on for a guide to how these events might run, whether you’re hosting or attending.

COOKBOOK CLUB AT HOME A beginner’s guide

THE BOOK. The Borough Market Cookbook Club nominates a book to be the focus of each month’s event. The schedule of books is chosen a few months in advance to give you plenty of time to select an event and plan your gathering.

They will always be books that are easily available to buy via high street or online booksellers, borrow from libraries, or view through the ckbk online cookbook resource (which members have limited free trial access to).

PLANNING. Your event could take place any time in the calendar month that the cookbook has been chosen for. Any day, any time of day. You will need to think carefully about where to host (for example, at home or in a local venue). Decide on how many people to invite, and who. Let them know what the cookbook is. Give them the event date and time. And send them the link to this guide.

Make sure you ask about any allergies or dietary requirements so that no one goes hungry or risks eating something they shouldn’t.

Decide if you want people to cook different things from the book or if a crossover of dishes is fine. Decide whether you want them to let you know in advance what they’re bringing, or just turn up with it and surprise you. We strongly encourage people to choose a dish that is safe to serve at room temperature, and to bring their dish ready to serve.

Will people bring their own drinks? What about plates, cutlery, glasses – and the washing up!?!

SHOPPING. One of the joys Cookbook Club events is hearing about members’ favourite places to shop and their exploits in tracking down ingredients. If you can, make the shopping as much as part of the Cookbook Club experience as the cooking or the event itself. That could mean coming to Borough, visiting your local food market, or seeking out small independent shops.

COOKING. Take care to prepare your food in a hygienic environment. The dish you make is for the consumption of others, so be sure to maintain the highest standards of cleanliness throughout its preparation.

THE EVENT. Cookbook Club events work best when people feel relaxed enough to be honest about how their dish went and what they think of the book. Try really hard not to judge each other (or each other’s food) and listen to what people think. Give everyone space to talk and share their views. Not everyone will agree – and that’s okay!

THE DISCUSSION. Here are some possible topics for discussion, to get you started: How familiar were you with the writer? Did you know about them or own any of their books before coming along to this event? Were there plenty of dishes in the book you wanted to cook? What else (if anything) have you made from it? How does it compare to other cookbooks you might know and love? What dishes have you tried at the event that you might now want to try out at home? Will you buy or keep the book? Has your opinion of the book changed over the course of the event, from eating the food and hearing other people’s experiences?

SHARING. Please take lots of pictures and videos while you’re shopping, cooking and attending the Cookbook Club at Home events. Then share them via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and make sure you tag us @boroughmarket .

IF YOU CAN, MAKE THE SHOPPING AS MUCH AS PART OF THE COOKBOOK CLUB EXPERIENCE AS THE COOKING OR THE EVENT ITSELF. THAT COULD MEAN COMING TO BOROUGH, VISITING YOUR LOCAL FOOD MARKET, OR SEEKING OUT INDEPENDENT SHOPS

Dark Rye and Honey Cake

Festival Baking fom the Heart of the Low Countries by Regula Ysewijn

(Murdoch Books, £26) BUY

DARK RYE AND HONEY CAKE

BY REGULA YSEWIJN

An introduction

Let’s be clear: Regula Ysewijn’s Dark Rye and Honey Cake isn’t really a ‘cookbook’. Not in the way that most cookbooks are cookbooks. Sure, it contains recipes – wonderful recipes that will leave your tables heaving with sweet, savoury and spicy bakes – but this is no more a run-of-the-mill cookbook than the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a nice piece of interior design.

Regula is an old-style polymath: a cook and a writer, but also a historian, a photographer, a broadcaster, and, in her native Belgium where she hosts the Flemish version of Bake Off, something of a celebrity. She is celebrated here at Borough Market, too. For years, Regula took photographs for our much-loved Market Life magazine. Even as her career began to soar, she’d make time to visit with her camera and an empty suitcase, returning to the continent with a memory card full of images and a case full of Northfield Farm meat. To the best of our knowledge, Paul Hollywood isn’t running any similar side gigs in Flanders.

Regula’s affinity for Borough stemmed from a deep-rooted fascination with British food, culture and history. Her infatuation with the UK informed her previous books, including Pride and Pudding and Oats in the North, Wheat from the South, and provided, she says, “an escape route from Belgium”. Hers is a young country riven by tensions of language, geography and class. Rather than confront these historic stresses she chose instead to turn her outsider’s gaze to the island across

the Channel. With Dark Rye and Honey Cake, she has finally looked inwards. “I gave the culinary history and also the history of my country a place in my life, and gave it time to grow,” she writes. “It was like a seed I always had stored away in a box, but never wanted to plant. And now that I had planted it, I wanted it to grow slowly and form deep and strong roots.”

As a conduit for all that complex history, Regula chose to focus on festive baking – the celebratory treats enjoyed on major religious holidays. She explains: “Baking traditions are the traditions that survive hard times and manage to remain relevant in a modern day and age.” Rather than look purely at Belgium, a country that has only existed since 1830, she sought to explore the culinary ties that bind the Low Countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and a small corner of France.

Based on years of painstaking research, Dark Rye and Honey Cake brings the history of the region to life through essays and recipes. It’s also a stunning piece of visual art, thanks to Regula’s highly distinctive photography: food shots, but also landscapes, portraits and beautifully composed still-lifes, all redolent of Golden Age oils. There are real historic paintings here too, stunningly reproduced. Hers is a work of impeccable scholarship, made accessible through its charming lyricism and pacy storytelling. There’s a wealth of knowledge packed into this tome, and not a word is wasted. Pages of waffles, but absolutely no waffle.

TARTE AL DJOTE

Makes 4 tarts

The tarte al djote from Nivelles is one of the most important (savoury) cheese tarts of Wallonia. It is made with a boulette cheese (or bètchéye in Walloon) from the region. This cheese is made by mixing raw skimmed milk into fermented curds, leaving it to coagulate. Its texture is dry and crumbly and unlike any other cheese I’ve had the pleasure to taste. It is totally fine to swap the traditional cheese for grated mature cheddar or gouda, or a similar cheese local to you. If you can’t find chard, the leaf of pak choy is very similar, and chervil creates a very delicate flavour.

Ingredients

For the pastry

500g plain flour

125g salted butter, softened

11g instant dry yeast

10g salt

2 eggs

125ml full-fat milk

For the filling

400g cheese (see intro)

75g salted butter, plus extra butter, to serve

1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk

½ tsp ground white pepper

A pinch of salt

35g Swiss chard, leaves only, finely chopped

25g shallots, finely chopped

20g flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped

Equipment

4 x 20cm top diameter x 18cm base diameter x 2.5 cm depth pie tins, greased and floured

Method

To make the pastry, combine the flour, butter, yeast and salt in a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook and knead until you get a coarse mixture. Add the eggs and milk and knead for 10 mins until the dough is smooth. Cover the bowl and set aside to rest for 30 mins or overnight in the fridge.

For the filling, crumble or grate the cheese and leave it out to get ‘sweaty’. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat and brown it (beurre noisette). Set aside to cool so that the butter doesn’t cook the eggs.

Mix the cheese with the cooled melted butter, the egg, egg yolk, pepper and salt. Fold the chard, shallots and parsley through and set aside. Preheat the oven to 210C. Do not use the fan setting.

When the dough has risen, knock out the air, divide in four and roll out the dough as thin as you can. Do the same for all four pieces, then lay them over the greased tins, press into the base and cut away the excess pastry. Pierce the bases all over with a fork.

Spoon in filling to just under 1cm deep in each pie. Place the tarts on a rack on the lowest shelf of the oven and bake for 20 mins until the crust has a blush. Transfer to a wire rack and set aside to rest for 5 mins for the cheese to coagulate so you can safely remove the tart from the tin.

Serve warm, with a knob of extra butter on top to melt. Pair with a fullbodied red wine (Burgundy is traditional) or a dark monastery beer.

The next day you can reheat the tart in a 200C oven for 10 mins. The tarts also freeze well: just thaw in the fridge and reheat.

Recipe from Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn (Murdoch Books)

Shop Eggs

Northfield Farm

Gouda

Borough Cheese Company

Swiss chard

Ted’s Veg

HASSELTSE SPECULAAS

Makes 14-22 speculaas

Peperkoek and speculaas are the Low Countries’ gingerbread. They exist in three main styles: the kind that is printed with a carved wooden mould, the free-form kind that requires no tool per se, and the cake that is baked into loaves (either free-form or in a wooden frame; now usually metal).

Hasseltse speculaas is a free-form soft speculaas with mild flavour that comes from the town of Hasselt. What is distinctive about this speculaas is that it has tears in its surface created by the bicarbonate of soda. It isn’t a Hasseltse speculaas without it and you can only obtain the right kind of cracks by resting the dough. There are many stories about the origin of this speculaas, none of them true and none of them spectacular.

Ingredients

325g dark brown sugar

175g unsalted butter, softened

1 egg

10g ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground cloves or allspice

A pinch of sea salt

500g white rye or plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

50ml full-fat milk

Method

Whisk the sugar and butter in a bowl, or the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, until creamy, then add the egg, spices and salt and mix until well absorbed. Combine the flour and the bicarbonate of soda and add them scoop by scoop until the mixture is well blended.

Knead until you get a smooth dough, cover and set aside to rest in a cool place for at least 24 hours and up to 1 week. You can bake your speculaas immediately too, but you will not get the characteristic cracks in the finished cake.

Preheat the oven to 230C. Do not use the fan setting.

Measure chunks of 50g and roll them into balls (for 22 pieces) or you can make bigger ones if you prefer. Flatten the balls slightly into an oval and place them, with ample space left between, on a baking tray lined with baking paper, as they will flatten out as they bake. You will either need more than one tray, or you can keep part of the dough for the next day.

Bake for 15-18 mins until slightly darker around the edges, then leave them on a wire rack to cool. When cooled, store in an airtight container.

Stale speculaas can be used in stews or as a crumble.

Recipe from Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn (Murdoch Books)

Unsalted butter

Hook & Son

Cinnamon

Spice Mountain

Sea salt

Le Marché du Quartier

POTSUIKERVLAAI

Serves 4-6

This sugar and custard tart has an excellent velvet-like mouthfeel with the sandy sugar topping as a contrast. One of our contestants on Bake Off in Flanders was from the Flemish Limburg region, where vlaai are most popular today. Four years later I found myself by chance in the bakery where she buys her favourite vlaai and I talked to the baker. After I tasted it, it is now a firm favourite in our house too.

Ingredients

For the pastry

250g strong flour

100g unsalted butter, softened

25g caster sugar

7g instant dry yeast

½ tsp salt

85ml water

For the custard

6 egg yolks

80g caster sugar

25g custard powder or cornflour

450ml full-fat milk

50ml double cream

1 vanilla bean, split, or 1 bay leaf

For the sugar-crumb topping

50g butter, softened

90g plain flour

90g soft light brown sugar

Equipment

27cm top diameter x 23cm base diameter x 3cm depth pie tin, greased and floured

Method

For the pastry, combine the flour, butter, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Pour in the water and knead for 10 mins until the dough is smooth. Cover the bowl and leave to rest for 1 hour or overnight in the fridge.

For the sugar-crumb topping, rub the butter into the flour and sugar until the mixture is crumbly, then keep in the fridge until needed.

For the custard, have a large, shallow ovenproof dish ready. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and custard powder until creamy. In French culinary terms, you’ve now made a ruban (ribbon).

In a large saucepan, warm the milk and cream with the seeds of the vanilla bean. Remove from the heat. Add 1 tbsp of the warm milk to the ruban and whisk well, then add the ruban to the warm milk, whisking constantly. Return the pan to the stove over low heat and whisk until the custard thickens, turning off the heat as soon as the mixture begins to give more resistance to whisking. Immediately pour the hot custard into the cold ovenproof dish, then cover the top of the custard (not the dish) with a sheet of plastic wrap to prevent it forming a skin.

While the custard cools, preheat the oven to 180C. Do not use the fan setting.

When the pastry has risen, knock out the air and roll out the pastry as thin as you can, then lay it over the greased tin. Press it into the base and cut away the excess pastry. Pierce the base all over with a fork, then spoon the custard into the tart. Get the sugar crumb topping out of the fridge and sprinkle it over the custard.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 30-35 mins. Set aside to cool completely and serve cold.

Recipe from Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn (Murdoch Books)

Eggs

Wild Beef

Milk

Neal’s Yard Dairy

Vanilla

Spice Mountain

WAFFLES WITH BEER

Makes about 7 large waffles

I found this recipe for thick beer waffles in a 16th-century handwritten manuscript from Ghent. Its title says ‘To make thick waffles you do not split’, showing that some waffles were split and doused in butter, while these were left whole, though often also doused in butter. Beer gives an interesting flavour note to the waffle. In that period there were two kinds of beer in the region of Ghent: small beer and double beer with names like crabbelaer and clauwaert, the latter containing more alcohol. They were flavoured with gruit, a mixture of herbs that varied. Common herbs include sweet gale, yarrow, mugwort, horehound, ground ivy and common heather, but spices were also added if they could be obtained. A beer with spice notes, or a low-alcohol table beer would be perfect.

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter, melted

115ml table beer (low-alcohol beer) or beer with spice notes

250g plain flour

25g icing sugar

8g instant dry yeast

1 egg yolk

150g pearl sugar, covered in a light coating of vegetable oil to prevent the sugar from taking moisture from the batter

Oil or lard, for greasing (if you don’t have a non-stick waffle iron)

Butter and sugar, to serve (optional)

Equipment

Waffle iron with a plain waffle iron plate

Method

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, add the beer, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool until tepid.

Combine the flour, icing sugar and yeast in a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk followed by half the butter mixture. Mix until completely incorporated, then pour in the remaining butter mixture and mix well. Cover the bowl and set aside to rest for half a day.

Fold in the pearl sugar and divide the batter into seven portions. The mixture will be the consistency of thick cake batter.

Preheat the waffle iron. Use a brush to grease the heated iron with oil or lard, if using.

Spoon batter onto the waffle plate and close. Bake until golden brown (how long this takes depends on your iron, so check from time to time).

Serve warm with sweet butter if you like (but I find the waffles sweet enough without it). For the sweet butter, simply melt equal quantities of butter and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, until the sugar has dissolved.

Keep leftover waffles in an airtight container. Waffles may be easily reheated in a hot waffle iron or simply in a toaster.

Recipe from Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn (Murdoch Books)