Dirty page 4
Chris: [00:00:00] Shall we start? All right. All right. Welcome to The Dirty Page. Hello and welcome to
Helen: this installment of The Dirty Page. I’m Helen.
Chris: And I’m Chris. And we’re two home cooks chatting about food and life through the guilty pleasures and dirty pages of our cookbooks. And
Helen: why our dirty pages? Well, because they are the most loved.
They’re the ones with the splatters, the the hallmarks of everything that we’ve cooked with them before. And we’ve been really excited about the conversations our pod episodes have provoked in our listeners. And today we have a very exciting development. We have… Our very first guest! Yay!
Chris: Indeed, we are delighted to say that we are going international with the pod and welcome Claire Murray, who’s joining us from Berlin.
[00:01:00] Welcome, Claire. And would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
Claire: Yes, certainly. Hello, my name is Claire. I’m really pleased to be here with Helen and Chris. I am, I guess you would say… a home baker. I would not really classify myself as much as a cook. If I’m coming to a party, you know, I’m bringing cake.
So that is something that I think I, I really, really love. And we’ll definitely be talking about today. I also love gladiola lilies. I love traveling and I love hanging out with friends of which Helen is one of my very good friends. So that is why I’m here today.
Helen: Hey, thank you Claire. And yeah, I know how much you like your gladioli.
Do you still have the thing on your bike? Like, you have a little tube on your bike for gladioli, don’t you?
Claire: Yep, we made a blumen transporter, or a flower transporter, especially to transport flowers to and from the market on my bike, so. Awesome. Yeah, hardcore.
Helen: I [00:02:00] love that. This is the point where I’m quite envious of Claire living in Berlin and that having a bike cycling is a very viable, like in a lot of European cities, very viable way to transport not only your flowers but your baking and things like this.
Actually, that’s a good question for you straight off. When you’ve got a really fancy cake and you’re cycling to somebody’s house with it, how do you transport it? Do you take it? Do you have you risk them on the bike?
Claire: Yeah, of course. I mean this is how we travel so you have to have a bike and it’s it’s actually more of a problem Than you would think because we when I’m baking for friends or when I’m going around to people’s houses I am going to them so I have to physically take things with me.
So recently A cake was strapped to the back of the bike and you had like cables and like zip ties and all sorts of stuff like rigging it on and Or also [00:03:00] you have like good design tupperware. That’s just the right size to fit in my basket Like you could get crafty about these things, but it’s necessary.
So
Helen: Ah, that’s good stuff. I just, I just have this image of you cycling around Berlin with, like, several tiers, sort of, like, and they’re slightly bent in the wind because you’re cycling so fast.
If I was going
Claire: to draw… Did you overestimate how many tiers I made?
Helen: It’s like, if I was to draw you as a children’s TV children’s character in a children’s book, it would be, like, you’re on your bike, and, like, like, the, the tiers of the bike are bent over and stuff. Yeah, that’s quite cool. And of course, there’s gladiolo framing this.
Of
Chris: course. Of course, this makes complete sense. I was originally thinking like carrying a cake in a basket sort of thing or, but, you know, strapping it to the back sounds amazing. And [00:04:00] I sort of want to try that at some point.
Helen: Man in Willow Creek fell over with big cake.
Chris: Yes, yes. Yeah, something about, the incident on Prince’s Highway where a cake is tragically spilled on the road or something.
Helen: Yeah, we yeah, we’re very excited to have Claire here because I think this sort of really typifies what we hoped with the, the pod that it inspires more conversations and we get to hear more about lots of different people’s dirty pages and things like this.
So as ever we encourage any of our listeners to get in touch with their dirty pages and inspiration and and we’ll hopefully get some more guests down the line. So what has been cooking? So how is everyone today? So I’ll ask Chris first. What have you been cooking up [00:05:00] this week? Well, this last month?
Chris: Well, this month I’ve been cooking a lot of things, but in the last month I’ve I’ve decided to go and treat myself a little bit and, you know, I’ll go out and about and find books wherever I can. And I’ve got two new cookbooks one from a gentleman called Joshua Weissman, who I think he was huge on YouTube or something like that.
And but he’s just released a book called texture over taste and it talks through different textures and how you can cook to those. And he does it in a way that he’s transgressing through different Flavor types and cooking styles, but sticks to his five main textures. One example is crunchy.
He’s got French fries and this one’s an interesting one. Nashville, hot honey, Karago. [00:06:00] So he’s combining Nashville. Nashville fried chicken with Japanese fried chicken. So Karage is your, your fried chicken. That sort of thing. Tempura, Arancini. He, he goes everywhere with this stuff, but it’s just amazing to see people look at because normally it’s about, Hey, I’m going to do a cookbook and I’m going to focus on just this style of cooking and I’m not going to go too far off the off the beaten track, whereas he’s gone.
No, I’m going to talk to different textures. So he’s got chewy, aerated, creamy, fluid, fatty
Helen: and crunchy. Ask what kind of words is he using to define his textures? So that’s quite cool.
Chris: Yeah, it’s a really awesome idea. But the other one, which I think Helen, you might be very interested in is a book by.[00:07:00]
Two ladies from Melbourne called Maria and Eva Konecki. I hope I said that right if I didn’t, I’m sorry And they are the founders of a lovely little shop that we have here in Australia called Gewurzhaus Oh, the Spice People!
Helen: Yes, the Spice People Right, okay, that makes sense, yes, okay
Chris: And they So, their history is that they grew up a little bit in Germany, and then the family moved to Australia.
And so they’ve got all of these traditions in food and around food. And they’ve basically put all of them into this book and also centered it around their spices because they make a whole heap of different spice blends and that sort of thing.
Helen: And it’s just this smells really good. I really recommend going.
It’s like lush. You know, you can smell it a mile [00:08:00] off. This one’s, yeah, but
Chris: there’s just so many different things like there’s German cucumber salad. There was there’s also a German potato salad, but they go everywhere with their flavors as well. So they go into like Moroccan style, apricot chicken.
And a few other things like that, but yeah, and I’m actually going to cook something from that tomorrow, which is a chocolate gingerbread cake. So I’m looking forward to that.
Helen: I like how they also, so the one product I’ve bought a couple of products from them, but one is their glue wine. They had a nice mixture for that.
And the other one was that Melbourne. Yeah, Melbourne meat rub, but it’s like coffee based meat rub and yeah, I can see Claire’s looking skeptical But it’s actually it it came out really nice. There’s a bit paprika and stuff in there, but yeah No, it’s oh, that’s exciting. [00:09:00] I can’t wait to Borrow that book from you, Chris.
Chris: Oh yes, I will bring it over, don’t you worry. But Clare, what have you been cooking lately?
Claire: I’ve actually been massively inspired by Chris from the podcast last month. Because, well the last few months actually. Because I… Forgot that I actually had Nigella kitchen. And then when Chris started talking about it, I was like, Oh yeah, that’s, that’s in my collection.
I should take a look at that and have basically been on a bit of a binge because I started out making a really tasty like bulgur dish with with like apricots and chorizo. It was really delicious. Then I made, chocolate brownies, which went down a storm. I find that in Germany, a lot of German people, like when you offer them sweet things, they tend to be a bit skeptical because they think of like sweetness in terms of sugar rather than flavor.
[00:10:00] So I always have to tweak recipes to just dial back the sugar and to kind of bring forward the flavors. So tweaks on Nigella, that they, that went down a storm. So that was popular. And yeah, a couple of other recipes from that. So definitely inspired because I was like, Oh, I have that book. I should look more closely at my collection and actually do something about this.
So
Chris: yeah, it’s such a good book. So as, as I said, last, last episode, she does really well at doing so much in, in, in this one book and yeah, it is our go to. We do go back to it every. Every time we go, I think we look at it at least once a month and yeah, we’re cooking, we’re cooking something from that tomorrow night, I think the husband decided today that he’s cooking lamb shanks, so.
Not lame shanks, lame cutlets.
Helen: That’s never a bad day though.
Chris: Yeah, that’ll be fun.[00:11:00]
Helen: Well, I so what have I been cooking? I had I had the slow cooker on this today because I’ve been at work again. I was like, I never, I don’t know, it just happens, doesn’t it? And you know, when, when you have to work over the weekend and you want to come home to something nice. Oh, the slow cooker is great.
I probably should talk about. The book that I use a lot for my slow cooking recipes, it’s, it’s just called Slow Cooked and it’s by slightly a non, interesting because I don’t know her real name, but a blogger called Miss South based in Brixton in London. And she’s just called Miss South. And I really, I love the way she writes about things.
I suspect she’s actually from a similar place to Clare. Because the way she talks and some of her food memories and things. But yeah, her slow cooking books, great. So, today we had, I found some [00:12:00] pork ribs in the freezer. I think we might have had an aborted dinner party a few weeks ago. And so I’d frozen some of them.
And so we’ve put them in the slow cooker today, and poor Andy had to put up with it, like, you know, he’s been around all day, and the problem with the slow cooker, when you’ve been, when you’re around, and you’re working from home, it just smells great all day, and you’re like, I cannot wait for this to finish.
Whereas I was kind of lucky, because I was away at work, and I got home at 6. 30, and, you know, dinner was just kind of there. So yeah, sort of back on the, the slow cooking, which I do a lot when I’m a bit busy, but yeah, that’s been, that’s been pretty cool. I’m hoping that after this next quieten down, and I can get inventive, because I suppose the thing when you’re really busy, you don’t feel…
So inventive. You just want to go back to [00:13:00] comfort. So yeah, yeah, that’s kind of good. So yeah, that’s, that’s where I’m at. So I suppose this is the point in the pod that we would normally sort of introduce this episode’s theme, but we’re still sort of working out our format. of the pod and things and kind of what we figured is today’s theme is Claire.
And we’re going to have two recipes that Claire’s found and she’s got what Claire’s dirty pages and and we can really focus on those and hearing about her food memories. that are connected to them. So I’m quite excited about this. So Claire, what, what is your first page and why did you pick it?
Claire: I’d like to make a slight amendment, if I may, to the theme actually.
Because the theme is actually technically Claire’s mum. And I am definitely dedicating this to her because she is my inspirational baker. She was the person who was [00:14:00] baking, you know, ever since I was Born the house was always full of different smells her, you know, her creativity with. Very little, you know, we had five kids in the house.
There’s a lot of food going, you know, that needs to be shared around. But she was always, you know, inventive and always found a way to make it happen. And my mom has a massive reputation for baking. Like, if you ask any of her friends, you know, her cakes are something to look forward to. Her cakes are something that people kind of go, Oh yeah, I really liked that cake that you made.
That was really tasty. With a very big… Wink wink. So yes, I, I am hijacking the pod and renaming this particular one Claire’s mom, because it’s definitely relevant. We’re
Helen: very happy and we’re obviously big fans of mums everywhere because at the moment I think our mums are our biggest fans of the pod so yes, this sounds great theme.
Thank you Claire and thank you to Claire’s mum.[00:15:00]
Chris: Thank you Claire’s mum.
Claire: So yes, I’m picking two recipes from my mum and the first one kind of builds on I guess a traditional Fruitcake, but it’s what we would call a teabrack because the idea is that you actually soak the mixed fruit in tea. So mixed fruit in this case being just a combination of currants, sultanas, raisins with a little bit of of like the lemon and orange thrown in.
And it’s quite easy, you just brew a load of tea. Soak up the fruit and then two or three hours later, you just throw in some flour, a bit of sugar mixed spice, which is basically depends on where you buy it. I think in Australia, it’s a British mixed spice. It’s lots of cinnamon, for example, and also a bit of coriander in there.
It’s quite tasty. [00:16:00] And then you either add. An egg, or you add banana if you want to go vegan. So, it’s quite a simple recipe really, doesn’t have many ingredients. But, when you bake it up, it is incredibly comforting. It is, for me, the smell of home. You know, like, the house is normally filled with this fragrance of like, tea brack just cooking away in the oven.
And, my mother, you know, she bakes on average seven per go. That’s how popular they are, you know, seven ebrax a go and they disappear like it’s not because she just, you know, has to find people to give them to people are like more than willing to receive them. And one of the nicest things you can do is just literally like cut this and smear over some butter and then have a cup of tea with it and it’s just heaven, you know.
[00:17:00] And. I think for me, like, this recipe particularly is one of the ones that was kind of at the start of my baking journey, which, you know, like, I did dabble a bit in baking, but kind of, say, a couple of years after I left home, I was like, I feel a bit homesick, I really miss my family and I want to think about them, and so this is a recipe that transports me immediately to, like, sitting you.
in our kitchen in Dublin, just, you know, chatting with my mom and my family when they come around and just being there. So it’s something that is really special to me.
Chris: That’s very lovely. I have a couple of questions already. The first one is, is it quite a dense cake? Like a fruit cake normally is, or?
Yeah,
Claire: it’s very dense. But when you say, I think dense, we have to be careful here because with dense people might think dry, you know? So if you compare it to like, it’s really like really [00:18:00] rich and full of flavor and very moist, but yeah, a really delicious cake.
Chris: I imagine that the tea would bring out a lot of the moisture of the dried fruits as well, which would actually add to that moisture and making it really sticky in a way, which should be really lovely.
Yeah, I’ve got, yeah, I’ve got
Helen: you. Does it, yes, I’ve put my hand up, I feel like such like, does it matter the tea that you use? Like, does it have to like, I was
Chris: going to ask this question too.
Helen: Does it just have to be a good strong cup of tea? Or does it have to be like proper Irish tea? Or, you know, just, is it like, you know, proper like, you know, builders tea is what we would call it, you know, proper, you know, no nonsense tea.
Or could you use, what if you use something more flowery like Earl Grey or is that a? No,
Claire: no. I mean, there’s no strict rules about it. I maybe wouldn’t go down the green tea route, just I think it probably does need to be a black [00:19:00] tea. But I know a friend of mine has definitely used Earl Grey for a vegan version.
She really enjoyed it. I personally, because it’s my connection to home, I, I use the same tea that my mother uses. I import that into Germany because it’s again, it’s the taste of home, but yeah, any black tea is, should be totally fine. So I, I think probably, I feel like Darjeeling might be a bit wasted here.
You know, I think you’d probably want something with a bit more body like a builders brew, but you could try it and see.
Chris: My brain just went somewhere weird and said, maybe you could try an Oolong cause it’s got that nice smoky taste and it could, could do something interesting to it. But yeah,
Claire: I don’t know. I’ve never tried Oolong. What I should say is the cake itself is really robust. It’s quite quite an easy cake to make. It’s not something that’s going to like fall flat in the oven. And because I can use it in both ways, in a sense of making it vegan or non [00:20:00] vegan, I’ve actually used it as a wedding cake on a couple of occasions.
Oh, yes. Really? Oh, wow. It’s a really solid wedding cake.
Chris: That sounds great. It really does.
Claire: I made it for my best friend and she… So, I didn’t know on that particular day, that there were going to be vegans there, but I knew that there were some people who were allergic to eggs, so that the groom was allergic to eggs. And so I was like, okay, I’ll use banana here.
And then I had vegan people walking up and going, hey, do you have anything vegan? And I was like, I did not know that I was supposed to cater for vegans. However, luckily this
Chris: cake is vegan. Accidentally compatible.
Helen: That’s awesome. I have this, I have this image now of a big slab of it with lots and lots of butter on it and stuff like that. So yeah, I can really picture how you’re eating it. It’s actually kind of cool [00:21:00] because actually I feel like I know the taste of this cake because we have a cake. It’s in my homemade cookbook called.
Blue Peter tea bread, and it sounds like Blue Peter, which was like the children’s program in the UK, that they stole this tea bract, because I’m pretty sure it’s very similar and I used to make it because it is quite a straightforward cake in whatever Whatever dried fruit goes used to make it quite regularly to take into work for the for the techos at work.
So I was told quite early on that a good way to make everyone happy is to make cake. And then funny enough, you know, some of your jobs get done like, and other people are like, how did you get that job done?
Chris: I I, I have a feeling that both Claire are,
he, I feel like Claire are both. You know, simultaneously Googling this just to see if it’s the same thing. That
Helen: [00:22:00] is correct.
Claire: I’m hoping to look at a picture. And the recipe that I found has only raisins. So, it definitely, it’s got, but the ingredient structure is similar. So, I think. It’s a similar recipe, but one of the things that makes, so shout out to my mother because she’s done a lot of development on this, one of the things that makes her cake particularly different is that actually, is that she has a significant amount of mixed fruit in there relative to many other T Rex that people have.
So in her case, it’s like 95, it feels like it’s 95 percent fruit. Held together by like a tiny bit of, you know, a tiny bit of flour and a tiny bit of sugar. But not, not really like heavy on fruit.
Helen: Yeah, but really moist fruit that’s been soaked in tea for all that time. So, gosh, that sounds amazing.
Claire: I, so what I should say when we spoke about, because Helen was telling me all about the podcast and she was talking about dirty [00:23:00] pages.
The problem for me is that I’ve moved a lot, like a lot, a lot, too many times really. And so I don’t have physical. I don’t have as many, you know, physical books, or I have not been able to use the books that I have. But this recipe is one that my mother sent me via WhatsApp and I’ve used loads. And she did actually, one Christmas, write it up in a little book that I have here.
And I will be taking a picture of the book and share that with you, so you can share that with more people. Because it’s a cake that I think… The world needs to enjoy it. It’s really, really delicious. Oh,
Helen: wow. That’s gorgeous. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that, Claire. That’s, that’s, that’s great. I think, I think you’ve, you’ve, you’ve actually hit upon a point that I think we’ll make that the dirty pages don’t have to be physical.
I think that’s true. And we, we actually did have a plan of an episode that is dirty web pages, but. We’ve got to be careful how we market that.[00:24:00] But yeah, certainly.
Chris: And as it is, one of those, one of those dirty web pages is going into our Christmas episode anyway, so.
Helen: But yeah, so, yeah, because, you know, we are, I think, like yourself, we, a lot of us do move around a lot more than perhaps previous generations did.
And, you know, there’s so many great. Resources online these days as well. So yeah, I think that’s a really good point that the dirty pages don’t have to be physical to through pages and you can you can get a lot of food memories. That’s from, from things that are a little bit more virtual. But I’m, I’m really looking forward to seeing that, that book and, and, and sharing it with more people.
So what, what’s your second recipe, Claire?
Claire: My second recipe actually very neatly built onto the first both again. My mother’s design, incredible, incredible baker. And she came across this in 1991. She was very precise. We were on holidays as a [00:25:00] family down in Kerry, which is a stunning part of the world.
It’s in Southwest Ireland, really gorgeous. And they were visiting kind of in like a big kind of mountain range, big for Ireland, which is probably not big for anyone else in the world. I understand that, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a really stunning area. I’m going to
Helen: say, and it will be big compared to Australian mountains.
So I’m sure Irish mountains trump Australian mountains by a long way.
Chris: I would definitely agree with that.
Claire: I have no idea, I have to be honest, but I just, I know, especially, you know, being anywhere else other than Ireland, people are like, they’re not mountains, they’re hills. And I’m like,
Helen: but
Chris: particularly if you go to Scotland, right.
They’ll be like, those are mountains. Yeah.
Claire: Scotland, Germany, Italy. They always are mountains. These are hills. But yeah, my, my whole family were down there and my mother slipped into a place that is quite famous [00:26:00] in, in kind of. in tourism and in Ireland called Kate Kearney’s Cottage, which is a really beautiful pub.
And they had a small little gift shop there. And she went in and was looking very quickly at like books with five kids. She didn’t have a lot of time to do this. So she was, you know, and came across a book with a recipe that she thought was really interesting. So she basically grabbed the back of like a brown paper bag and wrote this recipe out.
And the recipe itself is for something called GERD cake. So the cake itself originates in Irish bakeries and for a long time, Ireland was not a super rich country especially in Europe. And so it wouldn’t really have had a lot of money to. you know, be really creative in terms of food and would have had to be quite cautious with the food that it had.
You know, a lot of the families were really suffering from things like, you know, after the famine and everything else. So this particular cake originates there because the bakeries in [00:27:00] Ireland at the end of the day would have maybe leftover bread, leftover fruitcake, and what they would do was they would, again, running theme with tea here, soak the bread in tea, in old tea, and then mix it together with fruitcake that was kind of chopped up, and then cover it in pastry.
And bake it. And this was what Gurr cake is. But again, credit to my mam. It’s incredible. It’s really, really tasty. But what’s really important here is that we need to give, again, my mother more credit because she’s awesome. She did a lot of recipe development because when you normally get Gurr cake, the fact that it’s old tea cake or tea, tea brack basically means that it can be a bit dry and actually not Like not as pleasant to eat so my mother did a lot of recipe development to improve this and to optimize all the ratios And so the version that we have and love is actually one [00:28:00] where it’s you know Really really moist really delicious Maybe not a cake that you would serve with butter, but definitely a cake that you would serve with custard is very popular or with ice cream.
And what I think is really, you know, really important about this particular cake is this is the cake that my mother would make for people at Christmas time. And what starts to happen is, you know, she used to religiously make one for our butcher and kind of at the end of November, our butcher would be like, Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Your cake is really, really good. We really like this cake. You know, it’s really strong emphasis and eyebrows going. That’s a really delicious cake. So it’s one that she would make, you know, it’s a bit more work, so it’s not one she would make on a regular basis, but it’s one that really. Is incredibly cozy and incredibly welcome.
Like my dad! My dad, I have to be, you know, we should say here, my dad has been one of the benefiters of my mother’s cakes because wherever he goes, he basically brings, you know, like a [00:29:00] little dispatcher, he brings these cakes with him and he goes quite often hill walking, for example, and they were in Wales, up the top of Snowdon.
And at the top of Snowdon, he had like one of these big gherkakes and was, you know, he was serving it out amongst his friends, but it was quite a big gherkake. So there was a lot left over because half of the pack had basically not come up all the way up the top. And so he then just started like distributing it, distributing it to Welsh hill walkers who were just coming up beside him.
And they were having, they were thrilled because it’s so, you know, it’s such a nice thing to have when you’re, you know, cold and, and, you know, sitting at the top. And also the.
Helen: This year appreciation if someone else has hyped it to the top of their hair. Yeah. Yeah, that’s very generous of him to be giving out cake.
Claire: It is generous. I love my dad dearly, but I do feel like he has benefited a lot from all the work that’s gone on beforehand because my mother does a lot of baking for my dad, you know, she, [00:30:00] she does a lot of baking for my dad. So it’s, You know, we have to, to, to balance the appreciation accordingly.
Helen: Absolutely, absolutely. I, I like this that your mum takes a, a, a sort of seed cake idea and, and then she’s like, oh yeah, I like this. I like the concept of this. But it’s not quite where I want it. So I’m going to go away and just optimize this and make it exactly what I want. So that is and then, and then write it down and share that.
I think that’s that, that’s, that’s a fantastic, like she’s, she’s obviously put in the work, done the iterations and then, and now, now wants to tell everybody about how, how to make that. That’s very,
Chris: very cool.
Claire: Yeah.
Helen: Yeah. That’s good. So like when you make, so have you been making Gurr cake in, in Germany?
Like do you use scraps of other cake and does that change the sort of flavor and things
Claire: of it? No. So [00:31:00] I, I haven’t made it in Germany. I have made it in the UK and it was really well received there. I, so when I said my mother did recipe development, what I mean is that she doesn’t actually use. Old teabrack anymore, because I mean, to be fair, the teabracks aren’t in the house long enough for her to be able to use them.
So, you know, it’s, she needs to start from scratch. So she actually uses mixed fruit as the base and that actually, again, soaked in tea a bit like the previous the previous cake. It’s incredibly moist and delicious. It’s not, you know, it’s not at all dry. Yeah, it’s really nice.
Helen: Oh, yeah, this sounds, this sounds awesome.
And I like the sort of reuse option, or at least the original part of it, the, the reuse bit. Obviously she’s, your mum’s got to a point of like, not needing to reuse things. I just, I’m just intrigued because I just wonder if, if you reused cakes from Germany, which of course have very different flavour profile to them, that whether that would really…
There’s a sort of [00:32:00] geographical ness of it, where you’re reusing the flavours based on where you are, and it would be, like, so it’s, the concept is the same, but then you would get different influences depending on what you would use as the base. If you went on the traditional route of like, using old teabrack or something
Claire: like that.
I find that’s really, so… I find that really interesting because to me, in some respects, I get, sometimes I get a bit protective of these recipes because they’re, they’re really precious to me. And I know that one, one poor friend took one of my mother’s recipes and developed it a bit more. And I was like, we don’t go there.
That’s not something we do. And that’s not fair on me, right? Cause that’s not fair of me to be like that. But it’s just that I know. I know how much work my mom has done, and how much BAKING she has done to develop this, so I, I trust her implicitly. And I think, for me, it’s also the act of… Those smells and those specific aromas immediately [00:33:00] transport me home.
And for me, that’s something that’s incredibly precious that I feel really strongly about, you know, that I, I, I have that connection with my family, even though I’m separated by, you know, a lot of land and a lot of water. It’s, yeah, that’s really, really lovely. So you could definitely try lots of different.
Spice mixes, lots of different cakes and everything else. I guess maybe, would you say then it was gherkake? I don’t know, just because of the origin of what gherkake is. You know, it’s like old tea cake, or old tea rack, bread and pastry. You might, you know, it might become something different, a bit like bread and butter pudding, for example.
So lots of options. But I, I would stick to my mom’s because hers
Helen: is the best.
Chris: Yeah.
Helen: Yeah. No, I think that’s interesting. Cause like, you know, it’s, I think with cooking and recipes and things there, they’re very easy to evolve and things like this. [00:34:00] But I think it’s really interesting to have an example of when you don’t want it to evolve and you, you just want it.
I’m doing this. because of this reason and because it’s going to remind me of all these things. And now you’re making me think, right, I’m going to go back and think, what do, like, what do I do in the same situation? What, what would, what would I cook for
Claire: that? I mean, I appreciate it’s very much like my personal feeling around it.
And it’s not, you know, everyone can do whatever they like with whatever recipes, but it’s, it’s just one of those things where you say, I hold this deep, you know, and I, I, I really love this and I want to keep this because it has such so many connections for me. So it’s, yeah, it’s definitely a a very emotional thing, which I think for me is what Baking is all about because, you know, I, I see I, in my, in our house, we love, you know, so many different types of cakes and my mother has baked so many different types of cakes, but it’s always interesting.
Like when you talk to people about [00:35:00] baking, people often, you know, many people will be like, Oh, I don’t really like baking. I like, you know, mains are where it’s at and you say, okay, I have a suspicion. Just a suspicion that actually the baking you’ve tasted is like cheap and sugar forward, you know, and It doesn’t actually develop flavor or doesn’t bring that to the fore.
And so for me, there’s such a, like a joy when people actually taste cakes where I know that actually the balance is much better, the flavors are stronger, and that it’s, you know, centered around something interesting rather than generic sweet. To me, that’s such an interesting feeling because not always, but quite often, people go back and they go, Oh, this is not what I thought it was.
It’s better. And you say, yeah, that’s what like, that’s what we’re doing is, you know, that’s what baking undo when it’s done. Well,
Chris: the, the other thing too, is [00:36:00] when I have that conversation with people as well, it’s like, oh, I don’t really bake because I find it too hard to do. Baking is too hard. And I’ve.
Had this discussion with a friend of mine who has recently started sending me every week pictures of cakes that he is baking because He’s like actually you’re right baking is pretty cool It is a lot of fun and it is about finding the right recipe that works for the person as well In terms of flavor and in terms of the recipe as well
Helen: That’s pretty cool and I think that’s that’s kind of what we kind of want to get on the pod is that You know, the more people talk about what influences them and the difference is in it. And I think this is why I think it’s going to be really good for us to have. You’ve been an amazing guest to kick us off and and to have more guests.
Because otherwise we just keep hearing what Chris and I think and, and that’s not what the pod’s [00:37:00] about. It’s about finding out what other people think about food and, and, and how they approach it. And, and, and obviously all in a positive mood at the moment, but of course not, not everybody has such positive connotations with food and I guess that’s something we might tackle down the line and stuff.
because, you know, it is a hard subject for a lot of people as well and to acknowledge that as well. So yeah, so I think it’s been, it’s been a really great conversation and I’ve, I’ve, I’m really intrigued and, and, and loved hearing how it, the connection of home seems to be the really big theme for you and and it’s obviously lovely.
that you get that every time you bake those, especially the tea brush and and get to enjoy that. So that’s, that’s been fantastic. Thank
Claire: you very much for the invitation to come and speak.
Chris: Thank you for coming. It’s been, it’s been delightful. And I really need to try making that tea break now. [00:38:00] So
Helen: yeah, I will share.
I’m inspired.
Chris: Thank you.
Good stuff. So I guess from there, I guess do we have anything in our, in our mail bag, Helen? Yeah, I
Helen: mean, I, we haven’t had too many hits on the instas this, this last while or so. I did hear a story via your other half Chris, that someone had tried the cookie recipe that I talked about.
Chris: Yes. Yes.
It was actually that friend I was just talking about a mere minutes ago. He sent me a lovely photo of his, of him doing the brown butter, brown sugar cookies. They were. Gorgeous. And he was very, very, very happy with those. So I’ll pass that photo on and we can we can get that on the instance.
Helen: That sounds good fun. [00:39:00] So, yeah, I think that’s, that’s where we’re at the moment. And so, yeah, I guess to encourage people to get in touch with their food memories and things.
Chris: Yeah. As always, you can contact us at hello at the dirty page. com or at our Instagram where we are, where we are dirty page pod. Yeah,
Helen: and again, we’ll say a big thanks to Claire for being our very, very first guest.
And and to everybody for listening and we hope that you’ve enjoyed our conversations today. Our next episode, we will be getting our jingle bells on and we’re gonna, because it will be in December, we’ll be talking about Christmas food, which, I don’t know, by that point people were like, But we didn’t want to talk about Christmas too early because, you know, it’s…
You know, it, it, it just extends, right? Every year Christmas seems to take longer and longer. Can you
Chris: feel, can you feel the gluttony approaching, Helen? I
Helen: can, I can. I was just saying. [00:40:00] I’m going to try and run from it. I’m going to keep running. And so don’t forget that you can catch his. catch Chris’s weekly cook up.
So you’re doing something from the spice people? Yeah, I’m
Chris: doing something from the cookbook by the Gewurzhaus people. I’m going to cook a chocolate gingerbread cake and I’m very much looking forward to that.
Helen: All right. And you can join him at twitch. tv slash ginger chris 86 and say a big thank you everybody once again for listening.
Chris: Thank you everyone and thank you Claire. Thank you.
Claire: Thank you.