It was an interesting weekend in the Berry kitchen. My friend and colleague Barbara Davis had just received a cookbook she ordered online called ”Tin Can Cook,” by British food writer and anti-poverty advocate Jack Monroe on Wednesday. I was taken with it, and Barbara offered to let me borrow it before she had even given it a good look.
There were two recipes I thought seemed ridiculously easy and possibly tasty, so I went for it. The first, Canned Fruit Cocktail Cake, sounded promising. I got a little hung up on the metric conversion, but basically it involved a drained can of fruit cocktail, two sticks of butter (250 grams), 200 grams of self-rising flour, 200 grams of sugar, and three eggs. Anytime something calls for two sticks of butter, I’m a bit hesitant because a) that’s a lot of butter, and b) as our mutual friend Nicole said, butter isn’t exactly cheap anymore. (I googled “250 grams equals how many cups” because it seemed like a great amount.) Beat the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then stir in the fruit cocktail, followed by the flour. I baked it in a round cake pan I’d coated with more butter, which did seem redundant, in a 350° oven for about 35 or 40 minutes. When I say it came out golden brown, I mean it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really get past those two sticks of butter, and the cake wasn’t a perfect match for my tastebuds, although I’m going to try it again using one stick of butter and canned and drained crushed pineapple, to see if that tastes better.
I, of course, chalk that bit of a failure up to picking the wrong recipe. I’m no quitter in the kitchen, though, so I looked through the book again and came up with this one: Warm Potato Salad with Anchovy Mayo. No one in the house thought this was a good idea, but they don’t enjoy anchovies like I do.
I was skeptical about finding canned potatoes around these parts, but my son assured me I would, and he was right as usual. So I used two drained cans of cubed potatoes, one tin of anchovies, the metric equivalent of almost 7 tablespoons of mayo, and a tablespoon of lemon juice for ingredients. I didn’t have a proper immersion blender, so I diced up the anchovies very fine, mashing them a bit as I went. You have to give the mayo and the anchovies a good mixing before you fold in the lemon juice. The directions said to drain the potatoes, but then to warm them up in a pan with some water. I did that while whipping up the anchovy mayo. When the potatoes were warmed through, I drained them again and then folded them into the mayo mixture. Weird as it may seem, I actually liked this much better than the cake. Right now I’m waiting to try a little of the chilled version with my dinner.
I’m grateful for borrowing the book, and I’m also grateful to know that this cookbook author devotes her talents to coming up with ways to feed the financially challenged — she also has authored a cookbook for those with little or no access to kitchen facilities. As my television friends say, brilliant.
