One Fat Man

Zuccotto for the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, 22nd February.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, a feast which tells us much about the authority of the bishop, and particularly of the Pope.

There is an actual chair involved, it’s the one in the big chair-shaped reliquary by Bernini at the back of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The chair was thought to have been the chair of St Peter, and the seat of his authority… in the way that across the world bishops have ‘chairs’,‘Kathedra’ (Greek), ‘Cathedra’ (Latin). This is of course where we get the world ‘Cathedral’ as the seat, quite literally, of a bishop. It also gives us the term ‘ex cathedra’ where the Pope speaks ‘from the chair’ in terms of making official pronouncements on doctrinal issues &c.

So the feast the of the Chair of St Peter gives us an opportunity to give thanks in a particular way for the role of the Pope, and the work of the Pope. In the old calendar the feast is a ‘Double’, there is the feast of the chair of St Peter at Rome (Jan 18^th) and the feast of the chair of St Peter at Antioch (22^nd Feb), but in the new calendar is demoted to single feast… which I think is a bit of shame. 

This feast falling at such an interesting time for the Papacy, and at a time when we are wishing to give thanks for the Papacy of Pope Benedict XVI and to pray for his successor, means that it is the perfect time to keep and honour this feast… and I kept it joyfully, and enthusiastically, even though it was a Friday in Lent. Indeed, I decided that the Pope’s resignation effectively dispensed the world and raised this feast, for one year at least, back to its former great status.

For the feast I made a zuccotto. This is a traditional Italian pudding from the traditional school of Italian puddings: cake + cream = pudding.  The word zuccotto means ‘little pumpkin’ and people think the name of the pudding arose for one (or both) of the following reasons; either it looks like the dome of the cathedral in Florence, or it looks like the Pope’s skullcap, ‘zuchetto’ (same pumpkin route). I largely followed Gennaro Contaldo’s recipe, but using triple sec instead of vin santo, and adding marscapone and a few other bits and bobs, and some white chocolate chips and rather more nuts and fruit. You can make it up as you go along really. For an average sized pudding basin you need half the amount of ricotta mentioned in the recipe. 

Dutch St. Nicholas Cake - for St. Nick, 6th December

Today is the feast of St Nicholas, from whom we ultimately get Santa Claus. Beloved across Europe it consistently surprises me that jolly old St Nick was actually Turkish.

He was born in Myra in what is now modern day Turkey. He was a bishop, and a worker of many miracles. He was also know for his stealthy giving of gifts... or more accurately, alms.

Nicholas was buried at Myra, and there has been a church there since the 6th century, which I had the pleasure to visit some years ago. It is very impressive despite the fact that it needs restoration work. Sadly I don't think the relics of St N are in Myra , I have a vague recollection of reading that they were ... wait for it... nicked!

Nevertheless, Myra remains a site of great devotion (and tourism). We have a rather jolly gourd from Myra painted to look like a Christmassy St Nick. We also have a Christmas Kilim rug with him on it which I imagine some enterprising teenaged carpet shop owner fleeced my father for.


I remember reading in the official Myra bumpf about St Nicholas dropping purses of money secretively into the house of three daughters whose father had died - thus giving them dowries and enabling them to marry. N's quiet giving wonderfully embodies our Lord's instructions about almsgiving in Matthew 6... although somehow we do all know about it, so it can't have been THAT secret.

It is from these early traditions that come the tradition of St Nicholas filling the shoes of children with sweets on his feast, and of Santa filling our stockings at Christmas.

The shoe-filling brigade are mostly European, and so today's recipe comes from Holland. It came as a surprise (a surprise gift if you will) as my mother made it and surprised me with some photographs of it. She got the recipe from a lady in our home parish. She's had the recipe for some time, but hadn't made it because it turned out to be rather difficult to get ground cardamon here. Luckily my father was able to charm one of his lorry drivers into bringing some over. Always good to have a spice mule.

So here, thanks to parents, parish and lorry driver is a cake for St Nicholas:

Spices:

2 1/2 tspns ground cinnamon

1/2 tspn cloves

Good pinch nutmeg

Good pinch ground anniseed

Pinch of pepper

Pinch of ground cardamon

 

Pastry:

6 oz soft light brown sugar

6 oz butter

1 egg yolk

10 oz SR Flour

The spices - above

10 oz ready-made marzipan

 

Preheat the oven to 170C. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg yolk, and sift in the spices and flour. Form together into a stiff dough. Cut the pastry in half and roll two thickish squares, to fit a 7 or 8 inch cake tin. Grease the tin, and line it with greaseproof paper. Put the first half in the tin, and then roll the marzipan into a square to fit on top, add it on top of the first layer of pastry, and then put the second layer on top of it. Press it down a little. Brush with egg white or milk, and decorate with almonds if desired. Bake for 45 minutes. It will sink a bit when it comes out of the oven. Apparently this is normal.

Anti-modernist Casunziei (beetroot ravioli) for Pope St. Pius X - 21st August.

Pius the X was a legend. He was a great man and a great Pope, known for his simple life, a line in his will reads ‘I was born poor, I have lived in poverty, and I wish to die poor’. The conclave that elected him Pope was a rather drawn out affair, and he wasn’t the favourite. Indeed the favourite, Mariano Rampolla, was vetoed by Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary in the last use of of the Jus exclusivae – the right to veto a candidate for the papacy that several catholic monarchs held. Clearly the Holy Spirit was working through FJI as it gave us one of the greatest popes of modern times.

Pius was known for being anti-modernist, he made priests swear allegiance to the ‘Anti-Modernist Oath’ which was against dodgy new ideas interfering with the Church’s teaching, particularly it stood for the God’s ability to act in history, and God's revelation through the Church. It was against scepticism and relativism. However, Pius was not against change and he was a great reformer, particularly of the liturgy. It was Pius X who promoted regular communion for the laity – Holy Communion being the ‘quickest and shortest route to heaven’. It was Pius who reformed the breviary and encouraged people to pray the Divine Office. He also brought about a return to the simpler use of chant rather than frilly Baroque compositions. He was a simple man, the son of the postman from Riese in the Veneto region of Italy, where the food is wholesome and hearty. One of the specialities of this region is casunziei. These are beetroot ravioli served with cheese, melted butter and poppy seeds.

Pasta is jolly easy to make, but it is time-consuming. The ingredients are simple:

For the pasta:

Eggs, very fresh

00 flour, 4 oz per egg

Salt – half a teaspoon per egg

A little olive oil

 

For the filling:

About 4oz cooked beetroot – NOT in vinegar, but in water

A tub of ricotta cheese

Salt

Pepper

Some cooked potatoes – one big one, or a few new potatoes

I read all the recipes I could find for the filling and this seemed the best compromise. Blend all these ingredients together. There you have it.

For the sauce:

A good knob of butter per person

Grated hard Italian cheese

Poppy seeds

 

Method:

Two eggs is about right for enough ravioli for four. I made a double quantity and froze the other half of the dough. I’ll make tagliatelle with it later.

Mix the salt in with the flour, then make a well with the flour, crack the eggs into it, drizzle a little oil, get stuck in with your hands and make a dough. Knead it until it is light and stringy. If it’s too wet add more flour, too dry add a little water.

Once you have a nice ball of smooth but slightly sticky dough wrap it in cling film and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.

** during this 15 minutes you can blend all the ingredients for the filling together**

Set up your pasta machine. Cut the dough in half (based on two egg dough) and flatten it a bit. Feed through the machine according to the instructions. Basically you need to feed it through folding in half each time until it’s going through the machine on the narrowest setting and you have a nice long strip of translucent pasta.

 
Lay the strip on a floured surface. Cut circles with a medium sized round biscuit cutter, or the top of a glass. Take each circle, fill with a teaspoon of the filling, fold in half and seal with a fork. Lay each raviolo on a floured plate or baking tray with space around it. This dough is sticky and if you’re not careful they will stick together or to the plate and the pasta will split and be ruined.

When finished you can either cook the lot or open freeze some on trays. May sure they’re not stuck to the tray or each other before you freeze them and once frozen transfer to boxes/bags.

To cook the ravioli and make the sauce have two pans ready, one with well-salted and oiled water for the pasta, the other with melted butter in it for the sauce.

Cook the ravioli for three minutes in boiling water. Drain and pour into the melted butter, stir well, grate on cheese and sprinkle with poppy seeds. A perfect anti-modernist sort of dish for a wonderful pope.

PS Whilst these are perfectly nice, most other forms of ravioli are nicer than beetroot ravioli. So perhaps don't make these unless you're really desperate to sample traditional Northern Italian peasant food. 

Summer Pudding - for St Laurence, 10th August.

This time last year I was in St. Louis, having a jolly nice time after the SNTS conference, which had been in Annandale-on-Hudson.

I was there for the 10^th, which happens to be the feast of St Laurence, and my friend Fr Bede and I decided to make a summer pudding. We decided upon this for three reasons. The first was that we like summer pudding. The second was that Summer Pudding is a particularly English thing, which we knew would make the English monks happy (St Louis Abbey is a daughter house of Ampleforth - which of course is dedicated to St Laurence). The third was that we thought the magnificent streams of dark red liquor around the pudding would be evocative of the blood of a martyr’s death – even though tradition has it that St Laurence was grilled to death, so perhaps a nice pork chop might have been a better option.

Making this summer pudding (or puddings as it turned out) became a wild expedition to almost every food shop in St Louis. This was because in America (or at least in Missouri) they don’t really have blackcurrants, and whatever you’re going to put in a summer pudding you must include blackcurrants. If you leave out the blackcurrants then to be honest you may as well eat something entirely different... Eton mess, pavlova, raspberry cheesecake – I don’t care so long as it’s not summer pudding.

Eventually, at the Global Foods Market in St Louis – which is a wonderful place even if the juxtaposition of many bold international ingredients results in it having a rather confusing odour - we found a tin of blackcurrant pie filling in the English section. This seemed to be simply blackcurrants, sugar, water, and not-too-many nasty additives. So we bought a few tins and it worked rather well. We also picked up some clotted cream whilst we were there, and I have a feeling that Fr Ambrose bought a massive sack of MSG for no apparent reason (but I may be mis-remembering things).

We created the mother of all summer puddings to feed the brethren, that was – I kid you not – about eight inches high, with a diameter at the base of almost a foot. This required great structural ingenuity with strategically placed additional bread layers. The choice of material (a rustic Italian bread with a fairly coarse crumb) was of paramount importance. Here is the finished pudding:

We also created a dainty one for Frs Timothy and Luke, who were to dine early. It is pictured at the top of this entry. Finally, we made a mini one for Fr Laurence himself, whose feast day it was (he was away – so we needed to save it for him). But I don’t have a picture of that.

 

Anyway... to create a normally sized summer pudding you will need:

A normal-sized pudding basin, with saucer or plate that fits well on top.

Something heavy – tins or weights

About half a loaf of good white bread sliced into half inch slices.

Summer fruits – about two lbs. Maybe a little under. I tend to equally divide between redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberries and then perhaps throw in blackberries, strawberries or whatever depending upon what point in the season it is. In June a handful of very ripe strawberries will be lovely. For speed I often use the frozen packages (sorry). Two of them is about right, or one supplemented with  fresh stuff.

Caster sugar – 6oz

A slug of a plum or cherry brandy (optional)

 

Put the fruit and the sugar in a large saucepan with half a pint of water and cook. You want the liquid to go syruppy, and a lot should come out of the fruit during cooking.

Meanwhile cut a circle of bread for the base of the basin, and then cut slightly trapezoid pieces to line the sides. Make sure you’ve created a good tight lining. Cut a bit for the top too.

When the fruit is done (about ten minutes) spoon it into the bread lined basin. You may want to add a slice of bread half way through. Fill it up, and then pour in a fair bit of the liquor almost as much as it will take, adding brandy to taste. Do also taste the liquor before you pour it in, I like my summer puddings quite tart, others may prefer it sweeter.

Dunk the slice for the top in the liquor, and then put it on top of the basin. Now top with the saucer and weights and put on a large plate to catch the overspill). Leave in the fridge for a least eight hours. Save the rest of the liquor to pour over any remaining white patches when you turn the pudding out.

When the pudding has been weighted for the right amount of time run a palette knifte gently around the sides. You may want to pour in some additional liquor at this point if you can see huge swathes of white. Give the basin a little shake, and then up-turn it on a clean serving plate. Shake it a bit on the plate, say say a Hail, Holy Queen and lift it off. Pour the left over liquor over it, garnish with some summer fruits and serve with great rivers of double cream, or clotted cream.

Note: in St Louis last year we did not have it with cream, because the state of dairy produce in the Midwest is ABOMINABLE. What is called cream there would be called skimmed milk here. It is also because we had eaten all the clotted cream that we bought from Global foods, there just wasn't enough to stretch to 30 servings, so we ate it ourselves. Instead Fr Bede made something strange and cream-like using yoghurt. I didn’t think it entirely successful.

 

Bird for the Ascension and an attempt at Giuncata.

I've not been well. Indeed I've had a nasty sore throat, and been feverish. I think it's my tonsils flaring up, as is their wont.So my culinary activities have been rather scuppered.

I had particularly wanted to do something special for the ascension, as my grandmother - to whom I was devoted - was born on an Ascension Thursday.  On the Sorrentine Peninsula they make a curd cheese called 'Giuncata' on the ascension. They let it drain in rush baskets and eat it with honey and brandy. I decided that a rudimentary curd cheese would do the trick. But my illness rather prevented me from doing the necessary research. I did have a half-arsed go at it, by boiling up some milk in a pan with vinegar and cream. This is the basic method for a homemade curd cheese. I sort of presumed it'd work and I'd have a lovely quick recipe to impress and delight. Well, it did work, but I didn't get much cheese out of it. Do you know how much milk it takes to make cheese?! A VAST QUANTITY is the answer, and I did not have a vast quantity, especially given that I spilled some (but there's no use crying over that now). The resultant cheese (which took all of ten minutes to make) was rather delicious, but so small in quantity as to not really be worth a photograph, nor a blog. I also think it was a mistake to attempt it whilst ill. This is the problem with me and paracetemol. Half an hour after taking it I believe I'm invincible, and have a go at making cheese.

By next ascension I promise to have properly researched the methods, and quantities, and to offer you up a delicious giuncata. For this year, however, it'll have to be another chicken dish. The reason for this is that chicken is a bird, and it is traditional to eat a bird on Ascension Thursday... because birds fly heavenwards, much as our Lord did on this magnificent feast. This is convenient for two reasons. First, it means I can simply give you my 'roast-a-chicken-with-garlic-because-my-singing-teacher-has-told-me-chicken-and-garlic-will-make-me-better' that I did on Tuesday using all sorts of oddments from the 'fridge. Secondly, it gives me a good opportunity to expound upon my theories regarding roast chicken.

I ardently believe that a chicken likes to be roasted hot and fast to get the fat out, and that it also needs stock to help the breast stay moist and decent flavouring, because the flavour has been bred out of even the happiest of free-range chickens.

So for this chicken I did the following:

1. Untrussed it.

2. Rubbed it all over with butter. Seasoned it well. [Remember that salt brings out flavour, but that pepper adds a new flavour of its own. I rarely use much salt. My granny cut it from everything because of high blood pressure and my mother and I consequently do the same. Strangely none of us cut alcohol, fat, or sugar. In the grand list of 'bad things' salt seems easy to give up. My chief exceptions for this are: dough, aubergines, chicken, pasta, occasionally tomatoes, bloody marys and CHIPS. Hooray for low blood pressure and healthy eating].

3. Put half a bulb of garlic and half a lemon up its bottom.

4. Put it breast-side down in the tin, poured half a pint of stock round it and popped it in a hot oven for half an hour.

5. Got it out, turned it over, put new potatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, green olives, parsley, corriander, some more lemon, pepper, chilli, onion and the other half of the bulb of garlic (and quite a bit  more garlic) around it. Added some of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and a bit more butter.

6. Put it back in the oven for another half hour. Got it out, turned the potatoes about a bit, basted it. Put it back in for another half hour.

7. Took it out of the oven.

8. Ate it.

I did much of this in a lemsip induced haze. But it turned out rather well. So there we are. Bird for the ascension, and giuncata for next year.

P.S. Of course, in England, we will be celebrating a stupidly ersatz transferred feast of the Ascension on Sunday... because the English bishops in their infinite wisdom... blah blah blah blah need I say more(?) blah blah...

 

Calabrian Peperonata for St John Theristus

St John Theristus is a Calabrian saint who lived from about 1050 - 1130, and his main claim to fame – apart from a wholesome Benedictine monastic life – was that he saved a crop from perishing in inclement weather. Hence he got the name Harvester (Theristus) because he made sure the harvest came in. He also, de facto, stopped everyone in the village from starving to death.

So it seems rather appropriate that John’s feast falls on this, the first Friday in Lent, when we are all naturally thinking of our trifold Lenten call to fasting abstinence and almsgiving.

I really wanted to make bread for St John, and had even gone so far as to obtain some fresh yeast for it, but then I ran out of time as is so often the case at the moment. So alighting upon St J’s own region I fell back on a Calabrian staple, and indeed an Italian staple in general… peperonata. This goes deliciously with many things, but for today I think it’s nice with a poached egg, or a bit of simply grilled fish and some bread… and of course a glass of penitential acqua frizzante. It’s best made the day before and reheated.

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 green pepper

1 small red Calabrian chilli

1 large white onion

1 large beef tomato - diced

A dollop of tomato puree

Salt and pepper

A little basil

A lot of good olive oil

Chop the chilli finely, I think it’s fine to include the seeds as Calabria is famous for its chilli culture, but of course this is to taste. Then chop onion and (deseeded) peppers into fine strips and begin to sweat off in a large casserole with a good slug of olive oil so fine that you could almost drink it. When the peppers have started to soften add the tomato, tomato puree, and another good slug of olive oil. At this point, if you were feeling Sicilian, you might also add a couple of anchovies for seasoning, some capers and black olives. Leave the mixture to cook over a very low heat – checking occasionally - until it’s thick and glorious. About an hour and a half I’d say. You can do this bit in a low oven if you prefer. Then leave it to cool for a couple of hours before reheating.

 

 

Yoghurt Muffins with yoghurt, honey and rose water icing, served with Pistachio, Pomegranate, and Cardamon: for Queen Catherine of Aragon (d. 7th January 1536).

 

Now. I know what you’re going to say. Catherine of Aragon is not a saint… and no I suppose she’s technically not, but in my book she really is, and I have a deep love for her and a deep devotion to her. I think there MUST have been some early cult of sanctity around her, swiftly stamped upon by those nasty protestants. Indeed, vestiges of a cult surrounding Catherine remain, evidenced by the fact that to this day people leave pomegranates (her heraldic symbol) on her grave in Peterborough Catherdral. The events of Catherine’s later life, her marriage to Henry the VIII and the bogus divorce which led to the foundation of the Church of England, are familiar to most people. Fewer know of her role as a magnificent queen, the talk of England (she was held in such esteem that many hold to the theory that after her fall from grace the many pubs named in her honour were most conventionally renamed ‘The Cat and the Fiddle’ - a pun on 'fides' meaning faithful - Catherine the Faithful), a trusted regent in the King’s absence. Some of her fire is captured in a scene before the Legatine court in the play The Most Famous Life of Henry VIII (attributed to Shakespeare).

 

'In what have I offended you? what cause
Hath my behavior given to your displeasure,
That thus you should proceed to put me off,
And take your good grace from me?' (Act 2 Scene 4) 

This records a scene which happened in real life, and Catherine was famously stubborn in resisting Henry’s (ultimately successful) attempts to pension her off as the Dowager Princess of Wales (her title as Henry's brother Arthur's widow). She lived and died a queen, because she lived and died married to the King – after all, she’d spent a good twenty years being almost constantly pregnant by the fat b*stard.

Catherine’s childhood was no less extraordinary, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, she must have had a crazy upbringing in their travelling court. She was there when her parents finally ‘liberated’ Granada from the Moors in the same year that they authorised that Columbus fellow to go off and find America. A child of 7, already four years into her betrothal to Prince Arthur of England. How dismal mediaeval England must have been, how primitive after the wonderful tastes, and smells of the Alhambra. It is for this reason that I’ve adapted an arabic pudding for Queen Catherine. This is a recipe that I’ve sort of recreated from the wonderful restaurant Moro. However, theirs is much ‘wetter’ and sort of crumbled up.

  For the muffins:

 10 oz plain flour

8oz caster sugar
1 1/2 tspn baking powder
1/4  tspn bicarb

Two vials of vanilla sugar (I buy this stuff in Europe, it’s cool. No matter if you don’t have it).

Two tspns cardamon

1 tspn ground ginger

9oz plain yoghurt
4oz unsalted butter, melted
3 large eggs
2 tspns of good quality vanilla extract (not essence)

1 tablespoon honey

 

 

 

To finish:

 2 oz of yoghurt, tablespoon of honey, two teaspoons of rose water and one of icing sugar, a little cardamon and a tablespoon of thick cream to make icing.

Pomegranate seeds (Catherine’s heraldic symbol, remember), chopped pistachio nuts, and cardamon pods.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Mix the wet ingredients (except the honey) together in a jug, starting with the eggs so that you can beat them together before adding other things. Now pour the wet mixture onto the dry mixture and fold together using a metal spoon. Drizzle the honey on top and fold that in too. Put the mixture into muffin cases in a muffin tin, being careful not to overfill. Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) for 20 minutes – check sneakily after 15 as they might be done.

Leave to cool. Mix all the icing ingredients together to make the icing. Take the muffins out of their cases and put them on plates, pour the icing luxuriantly over the top of each muffin. Sprinkle with pistachios and pomegranate seeds. Eat whilst thinking how wonderful Catherine was, and how different England might be had she borne a son who had lived beyond infancy.

 

 

Bolo Rei for the Epiphany (6th January – transferred to Sunday 8th January in the UK).

I love the Epiphany. It has always been my favourite part of Christmas. The Magi bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus, the prefiguring of the anointing with myrrh during Christ’s passion in the wise man’s gift, the adoration as King and Messiah. The Epiphany was always the thing that kept Christmas going in our house, with the wise men making their perilous journey along various bookcases and mantlepieces until on the 6^th of January they finally reached the crib scene (always makes me think of the opening to the Eliot poem The Magi; 'A cold coming we had of it/Just the worst time of year for a journey, and such a long journey').

We would always leave the crib out until Candlemas, after all the other decorations had been put away, and I can remember leaning over the edge of the sofa and gazing at it. This sounds desperately pious, and I really wasn’t, but there is something about the nativity scene... the concept of the incarnation that is both wondrous and frightening. Gazing upon a tiny representation of an infant in whom the hopes and fears of all the years are met… the deep potency and potentially of the scene is quite staggering – and this struck me at a very young age.

Many European traditions go in for the Epiphany big-time. The French of course make their wonderful Galette des Rois with puff pastry and almond paste. I made a Galette last year, so this year I have turned my thoughts to something I first made several years ago, a Bolo Rei (King Cake). This is a Portuguese tradition (and so I am embracing my heritage, as I am Portuguese), similar to the Galette in terms of it containing a bean (to decide who is ‘King for the Day’) and a gift of some sort. It differs from the Galette in that it is a sweet bread, rather than a pastry. In making this I followed a recipe for a coffee bread (so called because it was served with coffee, not because it contained it) from the 1950s. This recipe is found in a marvellous little book by George and Celia Scurfield called Home Baked (Faber 1956). I find it much better than the recipes for Bolo Rei out there, and those that I’ve used in the past. It’s not authentic, but I don’t really care about that. I’ve adapted the recipe quite a bit, but the basic dough is the same.

To make one large Bolo Rei/Coffee twist, or two small ones:

1 lb strong white flour

3/8  pint of lukewarm milk (this measurement is infuriating, it works out at 213 ml. I find it particularly infuriating because in order to get it vaguely accurate I had to go metric)

1 oz fresh yeast (most supermarkets with an ‘in-store bakery’ sell this. Ask at the bakery counter). Using fresh yeast makes all the difference in taste. It also makes for a better, more forgiving dough. It is easier to bake with fresh yeast.

3 oz sugar (I used cinnamon sugar)

Pinch of salt

2 oz butter, melted but cool

A ‘quantity’ of chopped nuts, sultanas, cinnamon. Sugar.

1 egg for brushing.

 

My chief additions were:

A teaspoon of nutmeg

Glace cherries

Sugar cubes – crushed

2 oz butter, two tbspns cinnamon sugar and 3 oz finely chopped pecan nuts for nut paste

A handful of flaked almonds

A metal ring

A dried bean

1 tbspn icing sugar

A few drops water

Method: Put the flour in a bowl. Add the sugar and salt, and nutmeg and mix. Make a well. Cream the yeast with a little of the milk and the butter. Pour this mixture in. Mix with a spoon, adding the rest of the milk, until all the milk and fat have been absorbed. Now get in with your hands and scrunch it together into a ball. Cover with a damp cloth/clingfilm and leave in a warm place to rise for a couple of hours/overnight. It should double in size.

 Meanwhile, mix the finely chopped pecans with the extra cinnamon sugar and butter forming a thick paste.

 Then ‘knock the dough back’ kneading briskly for about ten minutes. Once this is done divide the dough into three portions (if making one large Bolo Rei/twist) or six (if making two).

 For one Bolo Rei: roll three pieces of dough in strands of equal length. Flatten, and spread some of the sugar-nut paste along each bit, together with sultanas all the way along.

Bring the edges together – but not so they stick, so that each of the three strands is sort of stuffed with the mixture. Now plait the three strands together, and join the ends of the resultant plat together to form a circle.

Somewhere in the bread hide the bean, and the ring (or add once it’s cooked, as I do). Repeat with the other three pieces of dough (unless you’re making one big one). Put on a baking sheet and leave to prove in a warm place for about 45 minutes. It should double in size again.

Finally, brush with egg, sprinkle with flaked almonds and extra pecans, place glace cherries on top in halves, and add crushed sugar cubes. Bake in a moderate oven for around 20 minutes.

The nut-paste stuffing was my own addition to the recipe, chiefly because I wanted a moist and sweet nutty paste running through the bread. It works well.

When it comes to serving, make a basic icing with the icing sugar and a little water and drizzle this over the top of the bread. Whoever gets the bit with the bean is king, and must be crowned (I usually save a pristine cracker crown for this). Whoever gets the ring is, err, lucky.

NB. The Portuguese put lots of candied peel in and on theirs. I dislike candied peel, so I don’t… but you may wish to find a proper Bolo Rei recipe which does this. They also soak sultanas in port overnight and work them into the dough.