news from Nina Walsh.
With a holy trinity of cardamom, rose and ginger can a biscuit go too wrong? I am soon to find out as I embark upon my latest culinary brain child, Mrs Bun’s Allotment Kitchen.
All that is standing between me and the perfect cookie is a year’s worth of accounts to file and a shed full of helpless seedlings in need of some serious TLC. I’m sure, once perfected, this biscuit will prove to be a real winner and those heavily furrowed doubters at the Gunsite will no longer disapprove of Fifi the mobile kitchen truck, forcing the wheelbarrows to be re-situated as she beds down next to the Sunday morning shop for a summer of cream teas and home baked goodies.
After much chipping away at the Allotment Committee, it seems the idea of an allotment kitchen has won favour over the compost loo and Fifi, with her LEZ unfriendly engine, has come home.
The kitchen will be open on Sunday mornings from 10.00 to 12.00 and if all goes to plan will be extended to bank holidays for lunch and afternoon tea on a ‘you grow it, we cook it’ donation basis. All are welcome, so if you happen to be rambling around Dulwich Woods of a Sunday morning, why not pop to the Gunsite at the top of Grange Lane for a quick cuppa and a nibble? We will be starting on Sunday the 27th May and keeping Caught by the River updated on any antics or biscuit heroics worth reporting.
Hope to see you there!
Cardamom, Rose and Ginger Cookies
Ingredients
200g all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda
3/4 tsp ground cardamom
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
75g crystallized ginger (chopped)
175g raw cane sugar
75g unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 egg
1 tsp rose water
1 Mix the flour, baking soda, cardamom and cinnamon in a medium bowl until blended.
2 Add the crystallized ginger and set aside.
3 In a large bowl beat together 100g of the sugar and the butter until fluffy, being careful not to add too much air by overbeating.
4 Whisk in the egg and rosewater until blended.
5 Stir into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon.
6 Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
7 Preheat oven to 180 C.
8 Grind the remaining sugar in a blender and dust a rolling surface
9 Roll out mixture and cut into shapes with a cutter
10 Bake on a sheet of non-stick baking parchment, sugar side up, until just golden, about 10 – 12 mins
