Oh Madam! Pineapple & Coconut Sponge Pudding

With nothing else to do on a relentlessly rainy Sunday, I looked wistfully around the kitchen in search of something productive to do. Finished editing the vegetable drawers in the fridge, my eyes settled on the fruit bowl. I'm afraid the lemon's had it and the pineapple ain't so good looking either... you know a pineapple is ripe enough to eat when it will give up one of it's centre leaves with ease, but when all the leaves have gone grey and the fruit is starting to develop signs of outer bacteria there's only one thing for it before it hits the bin. Out with the excellent Fyffes pineapple corer and give it a whirl. To those of you who know nothing of which I speak, the pineapple corer is a work of culinary engineering genius. Simply cut the top off the pineapple and push the serrated tube over the core of the fruit with a clockwise motion. Then just wind away until you hit the bottom and pull the whole lot out, ready cut into a beautiful pineapple spring. Pop the handle off, unload the spring of fruit and push the core into the bin with a wooden spoon handle. Bravo!

Anyway, this baby was like a good cheese, pretty manky on the outside but ripe and delicious on the inside and as sweet as a schoolboy's spangle. "I'll make a sponge pudding out of it", says I, "reminiscent of school dinners, with coconut in it". And I have to tell you, it was delicious - really good - greater than the sum of it's parts good and I promise you'll have this in the oven in less than ten minutes. So here goes:

The Fixings
110g Self raising Flour
110g Caster Sugar
110g Baking Margarine (Stork) at room temperature
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
3-4 tablespoons dried coconut
2 tablespoons Coconut liqueur (or Canned Coconut milk if you don't have it)
1 really really ripe pineapple

The Prep
Sift the flour into a baking bowl with the sugar and baking powder. Add the eggs and margarine and roughly bind with a spoon. Add the dried coconut and whisk with an electric mixer until really smooth, adding some coconut liqueur or milk if it is too dry.
Meanwhile put the pineapple in the bottom of a greased baking dish and add the coconut liqueur or coconut milk. If your pineapple isn't ultra-ripe and naturally sweet, add some sugar as well.
Spoon over the sponge mixture and roughly flatten over the pineapple - don't worry about going all the way to the edges - the sponge will rise well and spread.

The Final Act
Bake in 170c or 325f oven for about 30 mins or a toothpick comes out from the highest part clean.

Points to consider:
This can be a delicious Sunday dessert served with custard or some whipped cream and will be made in no time. The sponge mix also works beautifully (without the coconut but with a few vanilla drops) on top of apples, sweetened to taste. However, if you wish to really blow their socks off, try making individual puddings using a whole ring of pineapple, topped with sponge mixture and baked in a 4 inch ring, served with some pina colada ice cream, the recipe for which I will post soon. Enjoy!

It's rice Jim, but not as we know it.

Apologies to any of you Delias out there who have been cooking perfect rice for years and who may consider this to be teaching you how to suck eggs... but for years I had a shameful secret. I couldn't cook rice without making a complete bangles of it. It was either mush or a watery flavourless mess. Now I was quite happy to do dinner for six or bake you an apple sponge with homemade custard, but at the mention of rice I looked away like a dislexic at a book club.

Then, as luck would have it, my chum John announced that he was coming over from Hong Kong and bringing his new fiance Sherry with him. Perfect I said, I'll borrow Sherry for a day and throw a Chinese dinner party that evening. 'So Sherry', say's I, 'making rice for you must be the same as boiling spuds for me, but er, I can't, so what's it all about Alfie?'.

So she showed me with great simplicity and first explained the finger method. Take a cup of rice per person and put it into a pot. Rinse it until the water is clear. Add as much water as to reach the first joint of your forefinger as it rests on top of the rice. Add salt. Put lid on and bring to the boil then turn heat down to lowest. Keep lid on and after a while check. When it has craters on the top it is done. Put lid back on and turn off heat. This will happily sit there for fifteen minutes until you are ready to serve. Then fluff it up with a serving spoon. Fluffy and slightly sticky, but most importantly, full of flavour because it hasn't had the life rinsed out of it after it has cooked.

Since then I haven't looked back.
Things to consider though: If you are using a finer grain jasmine or basmati rice, add slightly less water and check sooner as it will cook a little faster. If you are making a curry, consider using Swartz Pilau Rice Seasoning. Now I'm not a great one for things from jars, but this wee mixture is very good. Sprinkle a teaspoon of the spice mixture on top of the water in the pot before you bring it to the boil. Job done - the result is a pleasingly yellow and subtly fragranced rice that works a treat with that curry you just had to make.