SWEET MEMORIES

Greg Malouf ’s childhood was marked by grannies and aunties baking sticky Middle Eastern treats. Now, it’s the inspiration for a new book, Suqar

A LIFETIME OF working in restaurants has taught me that nothing makes people’s eyes light up the way desserts do. For many of us, our first hands-on experiences of cooking involved flour and butter, eggs and sugar. Rolling out cookie dough and stirring cake batter is perfect busywork for little hands, and there are few joys in later life that match licking the icing spoon. In truth, my own mum never baked a biscuit in her life. When my brothers and I asked for pudding, she would push over the fruit bowl – and this is still the way most Middle Eastern families end a meal. In my own case, there was a brigade of women – grandmothers, aunties, great-aunties, cousins and family friends – who descended upon our kitchen to prepare monster batches of cookies for family celebrations and religious holidays. Abundance and over-catering are definitely the Lebanese way.

Many of the ingredients and dishes I remember from childhood – the chewy fruit leathers and sticky dates, the flower waters, the fruit molasses, the nutty pastries – have their origins thousands of years ago and remain largely unchanged to this day. And many European desserts have a Middle Eastern influence: when you choose your favourite sorbet, or eat a hot doughnut, a slice of fruit tart or a

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until you have a dark caramel. Once the caramel is dark and you can smell the spices, remove the pan from the heat. Add the plums to the pan and turn them around in the caramel to coat, then arrange them neatly in concentric circles, skin-side down.

Roll out the pastry to a circle roughly 26cm in diameter. Carefully lift it on to the pan and tuck it in around the edges so that it envelops and contains the fruit.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden. Remove the pan from the oven and leave the tart to sit and settle for 15 minutes before inverting it carefully on to a serving plate. Serve with the chilled sherry cream.

Clementine-cardamom cake

Serves 8-10

Sephardic in origin and justifiably made famous by Claudia Roden, the boiled-citrus-almond cake is a signature dish of the Middle Eastern sweet table. It keeps well for a couple of days – in fact it’s better the day after baking. This is our riff on the more familiar orange version. — 4-5 medium clementines

(unpeeled)

— butter, for greasing

— 390g eggs (about 6)

— 200g caster sugar

— 250g ground almonds

— seeds from 30 cardamom pods, ground (or 1 tsp ground cardamom)

— 1 tsp baking powder

— candied citrus zest, to

decorate (optional)

For the orange cream

— 125ml double cream

— 80g mascarpone

— finely grated zest of 1 orange

— 1 tbsp orange marmalade

— 1 tsp orange-blossom water Put the clementines in a saucepan with enough cold water to barely cover them. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 1½–2 hours, or until completely tender. Drain the clementines and leave them to cool. When they are cold, cut them in half and remove any pips. Put them into a food processor and blitz to a very smooth purée. Weigh out 375g of purée and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. Grease a 23cm springform or loose-based cake tin and line the base of the tin with baking paper.

Put the eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat them well. Add the clementine purée together with the remaining ingredients and mix well.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for about an hour. You can test for doneness with a skewer if you like, although this is a wet cake and some of the batter will inevitably stick. Really, it’s hard to go wrong. What we would suggest, though, is checking on it after 40 minutes or so and covering it with foil if the top looks as if it’s browning too fast.

While the cake is baking, prepare the orange cream. Combine the cream and mascarpone in a mixing bowl and whisk very gently to soft peaks. Fold in the orange zest, the marmalade and the orangeblossom water with a large metal spoon and chill until required.

Once the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and leave it in the tin on a wire rack to cool. Turn out when cold.

Serve the cake with the scented orange cream on the side, or dollop it on top to make a sort of impromptu icing. Garnish with candied citrus zest, if using.