Recipes from professional Chef Tallyrand:

WELSH BARA BRITH CAKE

Do you come from the land down under? . . . . .
Regular readers will know that I am in actual fact Welsh, but now reside in the Antipodes. If you never knew where New Zealand was before, if you knew nothing about this wonderful country before, this place they call God Zone or God’s Own you surely know a lot more about it this week?

With the Lord of the Rings movie ruling the world, winning Oscar after Oscar, you must now know why I love living here. You will have seen in the movie, the type of scenery I am blessed at seeing everyday, the type of views I wake up to every morning and why every day is a special day for me. Why I wake ready to celebrate a new day and all it has to offer and what inspires me to cook, to teach and to sit and write these columns each week.

For I live slap bang in the middle (earth) of where some of the movie was shot and most of ‘The Lost World’ was filmed. I sit on my verandah with these Lord of the Rings scenes, scenery, stretching out in front of me, my laptop on the table and inspiration fills me.

Not quire Lord of the Rings, we won’t win an Oscar, but as David re-codes this for the net or maybe as you are reading this I will be flying up country to film a TV programme for a UK television company. We will be filming it in a place called Rotorua, this is the place in ‘The Lost World’ (the TV film with Bob Hoskins) where all the geothermal shots were filmed, where they were attacked by the Pteryldactyls. Can’t give too much away as yet of course and will post updates, etc later, but I thought as the programme’s producer is Welsh, this week’s recipe should bring all these things together.

There was a scene in Lord of the Rings where they were in their little homes enjoying afternoon tea, it so reminded me of the small miners cottages in Wales, if you have ever seen the classic movie ‘How Green is my Valley’ you will know what I mean. So I thought I would share with a Welsh classic recipe. This cake that always transports me back to ‘the land of my father’s’, to my childhood, to my upbringing in the Cynon Valley. It is a recipe for a real easy fruit cake called Barabrith and dedicated to Rhian, who I am sure will appreciate the recipe, the cake and the reasons.

So I hope you will all enjoy it also, so until next week this is Tallyrand of Middle Earth signing off and see you all next week . . . Iechyd da, hwyl fawr and bon appetit!

Ingredients for Barabrith Cake

dried fruit	350	gm
cold tea (strong)	400	ml
brown sugar	250	gm
self raising flour	600	gm
mixed spice	1/2	tsp
egg	1	pc

How to make Barabrith Cake

1.	Soak the fruit in the tea overnight; to find out why <click here>
2.	Mix in the sugar and the spice
3.	Mix in the egg
4.	Mix in the flour with wooden spoon
5.	Pour the mixture into well a greased cake tin
6.	Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 1 1/2 hours
7.	Turn out and allow cool
8.	Serve with lots of Welsh butter and / or thick slices of Caerphilly cheese

Chef's Tip for Barabrith Cake:

. . . just sit down and enjoy it with a nice cup of tea!

Enjoy and bon appetit . . . . .

Published 01 April 2002