I always used to find myself rootling around for two cents in girly discussions of Desirable Male Celebrities. It’s easy enough to choose some classics, of course. Last year during a quiet moment in Mexico, I said to my dear friend Jim, ‘You know what? Brad Pitt’s really hot’, to which he replied something like ‘Oh really, how interesting. Welcome to the fucking party, Hannah.’ Fair, all fair. I’m a member of the crowd that’s pleased by Johnny Depp. I even had a poster of him on my wall for a time, but that blend of cappuccino grunge just mocked me. I don’t care enough, that isn’t love. Brad seems like a very nice person, which is good for his despicable wife, but nice don’t get me grinning like an idiot. Johnny ticks all kinds of boxes, but I think he’s too cool for me. I enjoy how he “keeps people guessing”, but I sometimes wish he would just tell us the answer so he can start enjoying himself. Also, and now I’m going somewhere with this, both of the women in these men’s lives look a bit undernourished if you ask me, and this speaks volumes. The ribs of happiness are not well defined.
But it’s all OK now, because I’ve found my two cents and they are going straight into a plum pudding. At 23 years young I feel lucky that I know what I want so early, and he’s a wine-guzzling, Keats-spouting, barge-riding bon vivant with two left feet and a penchant for pink shirts. He’s 40 years older than me and he’s Rick Stein. Now stop laughing, because I haven’t just dazzled you with wit. I’m not being ironic or trying to “keep people guessing”. At some point in the last year I stopped trying to love snake-hipped young things in RayBans A, B, or C, and started dreaming of a life that smells of garlic and permanence. Not that Rick and I would stay still for long. We’d travel, and oh! the places we’d go. We’d have a ball on Rick and Hannah Stein’s Latin American Odyssey; because I hablo español and Rick parle un peu français we’d even have our Caribbean bases covered, and on the beach at Ipanema we’d laugh together about how hard it is to pronounce Portuguese. He studied English Literature and I study English Literature. He likes dogs and I like dogs! I’m Australian and his wife is Australi—DAMMIT!
I’m young. I’ll mend. He has sons. Maybe he can be my mentor, because the love affair isn’t just with Rick, it’s with everything he loves, too. For the first time I find myself with an interest. A capital ‘I’ Interest, at that, in everything culinary. Not that it came out of nowhere, by any means. I owe a lot to my mum, the mega-foodie and wordsmith, and my dad, the best eater I know. I have always loved baking, but generally as the means to a delicious end. The most alarming development was when I started cooking things to cook them, not even to eat them. I should have twigged, really. Throughout my undergraduate years I had some sweet jobs, like at a really nice cocktail bar, or doing cushy admin for good money at a PR firm. Straight out of uni I landed a contract position at a major Australian publishing house. But the best memories I have of my employed self are from a summer I spent as the kitchenhand for my friend Andrew Gimber, now heading up Jimmy Lik’s in Sydney. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day during the Christmas/New Year period and no time to dry my sodden clothes in between shifts. But the food was amazing, and even though I was shelling prawns and washing dishes, it was fun.
So now I live in Edinburgh where I’m studying a Masters in English Literature, and things have got a little out of control. I can’t eat fast enough to do justice to what I’m cooking, so I palm a lot of it off to the wonderful Sarah and Emily down the road. Emily, the creator of such gems as, “I hate people who see bread as a path to health. Bread is a path to happiness,” rightly pointed out that my sudden leap into action is the result of having to write a dissertation. Ain’t nothing like staring at the space where 30,000 words should be to make you whip up a batch of bagels. And a cake. And maybe run down to the shops to get the remaining ingredients for meatballs. And homemade icecream. May I add that all this is done largely without the use of appliances because I am a poor student. A poor student that had confit duck on puy lentils last night. Yeah you heard me.
Don’t worry about me, I do cool young person things too occasionally. I have friends and hangovers, but that’s not what this blog is about. It’s about how today I made Chelsea Buns, and how I did it.
Chelsea Buns
Inspired by James Martin’s list of things to do with Hot Cross Bun dough, and I changed the flavourings of his Apricot and Almond Chelsea Buns to suit what I had in the cupboard.
Dough
450g white bread flour
2 sachets instant yeast
50g caster sugar
150ml warm milk
50ml warm water
1 egg, beaten
50g butter, melted
Insides
25g soft butter
80g raisins
40g mixed peel
85g toasted flaked almonds
25g caster sugar
2 tbsp marmalade (or whatever jam you have handy)
toasted flaked almonds to decorate
Heat the oven to 200C and grease a deep 21cm cake tin, preferably loose-bottomed.
To make the dough, mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the milk, water, egg and butter and mix it all together, first with a wooden spoon and then with your hands. Flour your work surface — wooden is best — and knead the dough until soft and smooth. I read somewhere that it should go from cellulite to a baby’s bottom; be patient, it can take a while. Transfer the dough into a large, lightly greased bowl, cover with a damp teatowel. Put it somewhere warm for about an hour, or until it has doubled in size.
When it has doubled, take it out and knock it around for a few seconds to get the air out of it, then roll it out into rectangle roughly 20 x 30cm. Spread the softened butter over the top, then evenly sprinkle over the raisins, peel, almonds and sugar. Starting with a long side, roll the whole thing up tightly like a Swiss roll, making sure to tuck it under as you go. Wet the end with a little water if you need help making it stick.
Cut into 7 or 8 even pieces and arrange in the cake tin, cut sides up. They should look like pinwheels dotted with the fruit. Cover again with a damp teatowel and leave to prove for another 20 minutes.
Bake for 10 minutes then turn the oven down to 180C and cook for a further 10 until golden brown. They should sound nice and hollow if you give them a wee tap on the crusty parts.
Melt the marmalade and strain it, if you like. Drizzle or brush it all over the top of the buns and sprinkle more flaked almonds to decorate.
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