It was maybe 1AM when I finally put my head on my pillow ready to turn in for the night but my mind was racing. In that period between sleep and consciousness my mind always seems to go through a shut-down ritual of analysing events that had occurred that very day. Maybe it's a way for salient themes and events to be transferred into my long-term memory. This twilight period also produces an opportunity for me tease out creative ideas and hypotheses. What if I hadn't had that last piece of piece of pizza? What if I read more instead of wasting my time watching Micky Blue Eyes (for the third time)? Why can't I get to sleep? Why are there no desserts with cucumber as a starring ingredient?

















In all fairness it wasn't the first time I'd thought of using cucumbers in a sweet dish. The thought had crossed my mind a few months back whilst preparing a simple salad. Surely there was room for a crossover with a vegetable that didn't really have a distinct flavour that only pertained to savoury foods. And then it clicked...Candied cucumber cheesecake!

...Or so I thought. Several hours spent in the kitchen trying to produce a candied cucumber amounted to nothing (nothing particularly tasty). In fact I lost track of the candied cucumber experiment and moved on to make cucumber jelly, cucumber jam and a flavoured cucumber juice. The taste of all three had promise but didn't match the creamy cheesecake I wanted to pair it with. The subtle cucumber taste was lost in a sea of cream cheese which rendered it as useful as adding a flavourless jelly to the mix.

















Either way that meant that the cheesecake I was making had to rise to the occasion and well this recipe never disappoints me. This is in fact my very own creation that is based on a few of my favourite cheesecake recipes. I'm a big fan of moist just-set cheesecake and this recipe is perfect for that. Even without the crazy cucumber idea!

















Ingredients
Filling
2 x 300 gram packs of cream cheese
300 ml double cream
3 x tablespoons of cornflour
1 x large egg
half cup of sugar
2 x teaspoons of vanilla extract

Base
1 cup crushed digestive biscuits
half cup melted butter
1/4 - 1/2 cup of sugar

















Method
Add the ingredients for the base in a bowl and mix together until starting to bind. Transfer to a buttered baking tin and press gently to give an even base. Put the tin in the freezer for five minutes whilst you're making the filling. Before commencing with the filling you should turn on the oven to gas mark 4 and make sure your oven shelf is in the centre of the oven. Put the sugar and cornflour in a bowl and add the two packets of cream cheese. Work with a metal spoon to a softer consistency, making sure to incorporate the dry ingredients in fully. Crack the egg and beat it in. Switch the metal spoon for a whisk. Slowly pour the double cream in whilst whisking the mixture. Make sure not to beat the mixture too much - it should be dense but also quite light on the wrist; you just want to get some air in the filling. Pour two teaspoons of vanilla extract into the mixture and slowly work it in making sure not to cut the air out.

















Take the baking tin out of the freezer and gently pour the filling on top. Try and make the top as even as possible. Put the tin in the preheated oven for 30 minutes (it should be getting a brown ring at this point). Now you have two choices - dry cheesecake fans need keep the cheesecake in for up to 10 minutes (the cheesecake should have a slight wobble in the centre) whilst those who prefer a more moist centre (like me!) should turn the oven down to a lower temperature and keep the oven door ajar. Once the cooking time is up, transfer the tin to a wire rack and let cool for 3 hours. After the 3 hours are up put the tin in the fridge overnight (you could eat it then, but I think letting it refrigerate adds more to the consistency) and voila! A slog, but a damn good cheesecake!

Let's get this out of the way early on: Turkish coffee is an acquired taste. Turkish coffee is dark and bitter and bares no resemblance to the generic freeze-dried lame excuse for coffee common in the UK. The coffee revolution in England has been in full swing for at least a decade and a half, and a new breed of coffee buff is taking charge. But real coffee is still in the minority and exceptional coffee is still a rarity. But in Istanbul finding somewhere that serves great coffee is not usually an issue as coffee culture has had five centuries to flourish. Coffee has ancestral roots in Ethiopia and Yemen and by the middle of the sixteenth century the coffee trail had invaded Turkey's largest city. This blog entry is my homage to the impact Turkish coffee has had on the life of Lebanese people and beyond.

















One foodstuff that has been a beneficiary of the aforementioned coffee-shop boom in the UK has been the humble biscotti. Of course in Italian biscotti just means biscuit but in the English speaking world it refers to twice-baked rusk-like biscuit. Below is the recipe for my ideal coffee break: Pistachio Biscotti, Cardamom Cream and Turkish Coffee.

Ingredients
Pistachio Biscotti
100g self-raising flour
20g ground almonds
50g slighty salted butter
1 egg
50g crushed roasted pistachios
75-100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

















Cardamom Cream
1 pot double cream
3-4 pods of green cardamom
3-4 tablespoons icing sugar

Turkish Coffee
water
freshly ground coffee beans

Method
Pistachio Biscotti
Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Whisk the egg, 50g of softened butter and vanilla extract until pale. Work the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and form into a dough. It should just about form a ball. Cover it with cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 190degrees Celsius and grease a baking tray. Form the dough into two sausage-like shapes some width apart (they will expand). Cook until slightly golden (15minutes or so) and take out and cool. With a pallet knife cut diagonal biscuits and turn them onto their sides. You can brush them with more butter and sprinkle with icing sugar at this point. Place them back into the oven to crisp up and brown further. Take out of the oven and cool. Store in an airtight container. Note: this should make around 10-12 biscuits.

















Cardamom Cream
Split the cardamom pods and extract the little black seeds from inside. Discard the outer pod and gently grind the inner seeds. Whisk the double cream lightly before adding the icing sugar and crushed cardamom. Whisk until relatively stiff and scoop into a serving bowl.

Turkish Coffee
Heat the water in a a coffee pot on a medium heat. When the water boils mix in a 2-3 teaspoons of freshly ground coffee beans and return to the heat. When the coffee bubbles and is about to overflow turn off the heat. Serve in little porcelain glasses without any sugar. The sweetness of the biscotti and cream are a good counterpoint to the coffee. The biscotti give a nutty, buttery tone and the cardamom cream a spiced lift. I think I might go on another coffee break.