April 2024 Newsletter
Bilbao, San Sebastian, and Basque Cheesecake
To watch
À Plein Temps (Full Time) (2022)
While many filmmakers go out of their way to capture the fantastical and surreal - the cannibal erotica or the one about the dog in a human’s body spring to mind for some reason - À Plein Temps’ director Eric Gravel simply holds up a mirror to show us how we live our own lives, and honestly, it’s all the more heart-wrenching for it.
Single-mother Julie lives in the countryside outside Paris and works in the city. Strikes start and the only way she can hold on to these fraying threads, to keep up a facade of normality, is by desperately running, begging, demanding. The camera follows her everywhere as she squeezes onto commuter buses, hitchhikes, sprints through Paris, its movements jerky as though we too are part of the commuting chaos. It’s a frantic snapshot of a couple of days in the life of those who have to furiously paddle to keep their heads above water, and it will leave you momentarily breathless.
And for anyone who watches Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent), you may recognise leading actress Laure Calamy, who reveals herself to be a chameleon, utterly possessing that jerky camera and thoroughly deserving her Best Actress win at the Venice Film Festival.
To eat
Basque Cheesecake
Today, I have a curveball for you. Instead of a French cheese, I offer you a Spanish cheesecake! They share a key ingredient after all.
Gaylord and I have just returned from waterlogged northern Spain where it rained almost without hesitation. We drove to and from Bilbao via San Sebastian and there was no way I was going to miss visiting the birthplace of the Basque cheesecake - my own personal pilgrimage, if you will!
La Viña is tucked away down a street in San Sebastian’s Old Town and even at 11 o’clock in the morning, the restaurant is packed with people scooping up forkfuls of cheesecake. Great wheels are stacked up the walls and servers expertly slice them to serve on plates or slipped into plastic to-go boxes.
For those who have yet to try Basque cheesecake, let me introduce you - first, it is a baked cheesecake with a surface somewhat shiny and darkened in patches from the heat of the oven. It is also sans-biscuit base. Unusual, and yes increasingly resembling a wheel of cheese, especially as its flavour is less sweet, more tangy and lactic, however, it’s the texture of these cheesecakes that keep La Viña in constant business and sharpening those serving knives. The centre is nothing short of miraculous. Wibbly and soft, the creamy middle is smooth as silk. And that dark surface is the perfect contrast, a hint of bitterness in that sea of cream. Plus, it’s simply something to chew.
With Basque cheesecake, it’s all down to personal preference. We stumbled across another Basque cheesecake bar in Bilbao on yet another wet afternoon. Here, they erred on the side of underdone, the centres oozing like melted ice cream.
Meanwhile, “overdone” is fluffy (which is being polite - overdone baked cheesecake might as well be a pile of scrambled eggs. I learnt this the hard way). I made my own last year - in fact I made two within a week, absolutely possessed by the idea of that perfect glossy set custard - and here is the recipe, for you to try it should you be anything like me and nursing regular cheesecake cravings.
Burnt Basque Cheesecake with Poached Rhubarb
I have learnt many lessons from this cheesecake and the key is to stay on your guard! Too long in the oven means fluffy curds and no one wants that. For an 8 inch springform cake tin, 40 minutes of cooking is advised, but that includes any grilling or blowtorching to darken the surface. For a rule of thumb: turn off the oven before you think you should as the residual heat will continue to cook the centre.
Also there is a lot of cream cheese in this – I bought 5 packs in 2 days and I think both myself and Lidl are happy that I don't need to buy any more.
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: up to 45 minutes
Resting Time: 8 hours
Course: Baking, Dessert, sweet
Cuisine: Basque
Servings: 8
Author: Based on Nigel Slater’s recipe
Ingredients
Butter for greasing
650 g cream cheese
200 g sugar
½ lemon, zested
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs and an extra yolk
250 ml double cream
150 ml crème fraiche
30 g cornflour
A pinch of salt
For the poached rhubarb
250 g chopped rhubarb
2½ tbsp sugar
100 ml water
2 bashed cardamom pods or a star anise, cinnamon sticks, orange peel, anything you'd like
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 230°C/210°C fan/450°F. Place a baking tray on the upper shelf, first making sure there is enough space for the tin and the paper.
Line a 8-inch springform baking tin with a square sheet of baking paper. First, grease the tin with some butter then push the paper into the corners, sticking to the buttery edges. Don't worry about it bunching up. Take another square of paper and repeat the process at 90° to the previous piece then set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese with a wooden spoon until mailable. Add the sugar and stir to combine.
Grate in the lemon zest, add the vanilla extract then crack in an egg. Whisk to combine, then add each egg and the extra yolk one at time, whisking with each addition.
Pour in the cream and the crème fraiche and whisk until everything is well blended. It will be fairly liquid so it may seem doubtful that it will ever set into a cheesecake but have no fear.
In a small bowl, sift the cornflour. Add a couple of spoonfuls of cheesecake mixture and stir to create a slurry. Pour it into the creamy custard, add the pinch of salt, then stir to make sure it's all well mixed. Pour it all into the lined tin and tap it a few times to make sure there are no trapped air bubbles.
Carefully place the tin on the baking tray in the oven and leave to bake for 30 minutes. From that point on though, you need to be on guard!
The centre will still look like liquid. If the surface isn't blackened, don't worry, give it another 7-8 minutes or so – in this time, the centre will start to set quite quickly so keep your eye on it – and rotate the tin to make sure every side is getting the heat. Then set the dial to the grill setting. Check every minute, rotating the tin to ensure even burning (a sentence I never thought I'd write). Between 40-45 minutes in the oven is about right, although if you'd like the centre to be more liquid, reduce the time to around 35 minutes. Either way, when you jiggle the pan, the centre needs to ripple.
Turn off the oven, open the door and leave the cheesecake inside for 5 minutes as it adjusts to the temperature. Place it on a cooling rack and leave for two hours, then put it in the fridge overnight. The next day, remove it from the tin, peel off the paper and cut large creamy slices.
For the poached rhubarb
Place the chopped rhubarb in a frying pan, cover with the sugar and water, and add the spices of your choice. Set the heat to medium high to melt the sugar. Stir it all to ensure even cooking.
Once the water starts to bubble, cook the rhubarb for up to 5 minutes depending on the pieces’ thickness. For thicker pieces, they may need an extra minute. Remove them from the pan, then continue to boil the syrup for another minute or so until a bit thicker. Pour it into a bowl to cool slightly.
Serve the poached rhubarb with the cheesecake either warm or cold.
Hello! Or should I say Hola!
Last week, we filled the car - or should I say, I filled the car, taking my entire wardrobe, various pairs of shoes, and my pillow - and then drove the three hours south into northern Spain. We sped along, merry thanks to our thermos of coffee, a breakfast of leftover chocolate and raspberry brownies, and the spectacular Pyrenees crowding the horizon, and the clouds thickened as we closed in on Spain. By the border, it was splattering with rain. An omen for the following five days.
Gaylord and I share a purpose in life and that is to eat and to eat well. While the endless rain of Europe’s spring has definitely left us all fully saturated, needing to be wrung out like sponges, the rain wasn’t going to deter us from our goal. The north of Spain has a reputation for two things after all: excellent food and a helluva lot of rain.
We arrived in San Sebastian to, yes you guessed it, rain, but also eggs benedict on a wedge of brioche and extraordinarily cheap flat whites, which simply don’t exist in France where the café crème reigns supreme! We’re easily pleased.
Then, safely back in the car as the downpour continued, we drove through the mountains, lush with trees, through tunnel after tunnel, as I tested the waters and tried to make Gaylord appreciate ABBA’s genius (still a work in progress), to then descend the mountain into a misty valley, en route for our night at a spa hotel.