Kiss from a quince

Everything we eat has a story. A story about where it came from, how it was made, born, or spouted; and how it travelled toward us.

Everything we eat also becomes part of our own story. A link in the web of meaning that flavour holds for us. Each bit of sustenance that passes over our lips has the potential to start a story, or to stir up a memory.

Quince, for me, is winter. It’s granny food. It exists, in bottled form, on the colour scale from fleshy crayfish to sensuous stripper red. It’s neatly layered in conserve bottled, lids tightly screwed on.

I don’t really remember by granny ever making anything with quince. Maybe she did, and I only associate it with her because the senses of smell and roots of nostalgia were affixed in me before my visual memories. Maybe I associate quince with the wrinkled faces of old women I saw as we paused at farm stalls across the country during family holidays. Neatly packed in rows with handwritten labels. Part of the granny-domain.

Either way, I walked into a local supermarket last week in a post-exam daze. My mind was still whirling with theories and ethnographic accounts. I was craving something I couldn’t name.

I saw the quince, bright yellow, bulbous on the shelf, larger than the surrounding fruit. I knew immediately that they were what I needed. I selected three, smooth skinned and heavy for their weight.

Quince poached in rosé wine with orange and vanilla

I bought them home, and started to put the exam out of my mind as I emptied the bottle of rosé wine (merlot and pintoage) that I had bought into a saucepan with 1 cup of sugar and 1 orange, cut into wedges. I peeled the three quinces one by one, with a peeler, nibbling at the skin to gauge it. Apple-y and sour, strong.

Apple Crumble

Floury apples. I don’t understand them. I don’t understand how they are still sold in stores. I don’t understand why people still buy them, planning to eat them… for fun.

One of my housemates recently got hoodwinked into buying a pack of “sweet and crunchy” red apples only to find that the texture was a combination between sponge and sand.

Not fit for the lunch box, we decided to find a purpose for the apples. we decided that if you can get past the sif texture to the timeless ripe- apple taste, you're still the winner. 

When life throws you floury apples- make apple crumble.

Humble crumble

Yes. The 70's are back. We moved into a fully furnished house and it came with these period petal glasses. We love them so don't laugh. 

Decemberitis: The fear of cooking failure

Mageirocophobia: The fear of cooking. I am not a sufferer. But every year I fret from a dose of what I call Decemberitis: the fear of flops.  It creeps up on me towards the start of the festive season. After six months of my academic, student lifestyle (where I eat communally on a low budget, only cook once or twice a week, and leave my favourite kitchen equipment to gather dust in the cupboards) I start to prepare for my private cheffing stint in Hermanus.

The annoying worrying starts. What if I’ve lost my touch? What if I can’t chop fast enough? What if… what if…. They don’t like the food? I try to resist it, going through old blog posts, proof that I can. Paging through my favourite recipe books, hoping inspiration will strike. Googling away at food blogs while I should be studying for exams.

On my first day of work I get a caught by a speed trap en route to Hermanus. Then, the guests arrive late. The butcher order isn’t in yet and I go shopping elsewhere. The meat is not top notch. (I don’t recommend Woolworth’s sirloin, mine was super- stringy) A first lunch flop. This is exactly what happened last year and the year before. A tradition perhaps?

Love: Chocolate mud Cake with Raspberry Meringues

I attended a very beautiful 21^st party recently. The kind with warm friends, great outfits and songs written especially for the birthday girl. Someone shouted “cake is love” before Candace cut the cake, and screamed; with a room full of people who adore her joining in.

Cake contains the kind of love that cut be portioned and shared, from plate to mouth to mouth. With receptive grins and crumb- cornered mouths and licking of icing off fingers.

I had a cake- making project coming up and I was feeling inspired. Efe is a cake- lover, a dark- chocolate lover; and the kind of person who generously shares her passions. She commissioned me to make the party centrepiece and I agreed, despite 7 looming academic pieces of work and all sorts of other little stresses hanging about my mind. I agreed because there is nothing as satisfying as

Googling chocolate cakes when you should be studying (thank you Sweetapolita, you are great.)

Going shopping and putting 2 kilograms of chocolate and 1kg of butter in your trolley. 

Discussing cake making with Chef Jenny, and Thandi from next door.

Making a cake of three tiers that you know will be dismantled in minutes

The reward that comes with a chocolate- smattered/ pink/ silver dusted dirty apron 

Watching the birthday girl’s face when she sees the sparkles and the pink fairy dust and the crowds of friends singing, and bursts into tears.

Before you start worrying that this is going to be a deeply emotional and teary post let me tell you that making this kind of cake requires brute physical strength. Well, ok, if you don’t have a whisk attachment for your mixer, that is. The rest is all quite sentimental and airy and fun.

Three tier Chocolate mud Cake with Raspberry Meringues

Chocolate Sorbet in Snap!-ity baskets

Oozy Schmoozy dark chocolate sorbet

I undid the silver and brown wrapper of a bar of Green and Black's Organic dark chocolate recently and chanced upon this gem of a recipe. I can't even remember what my original intention for the chocolate was.I switched my plans to sorbet immediately.

I've decided that chocolate and sorbet are better  friends than chocolate and ice- cream. This is because dairy is an over-bearing character at times, hiding the best of chocolate's tasty traits away. We can't have that.

Of course the hazard involved in preparing a recipe from a wrapper is that someone will find the paper later, and, wondering why Carina is littering in the kitchen, will dispose of it. Of course, a guest asked for the recipe to be passed on.. and on discovering it's absence my mind immediately flew to a scene in film Charlie and the Chocolate factory (adapted from Roald Dahl's fabulous book). That horrible girl Veruca Salt's father orders his whole factory of nut workers to engage in opening chocolate bars in the search for a golden ticket. My imagination exploded with images of supermarkets selling out of Chocolate bars at an alarming rate as we all searched for the the golden recipe.. a fantastic chocolate frenzy would ensue of, course.

Then my imagination calmed down, rid itself of chocolate fountains and silvery- fireworks and sensibly googled Green and Blacks, who thankfully have their recipes online.. We were saved from having to buy a million more chocolate bars. Dammit.

For the love of summer. and strawberries.

Strawberry Summer Cake

I found this recipe on one of my favourite blogs, Smitten Kitchen. It's adapted from Martha Stewart, and is called Strawberry Summer Cake. Those are two things I adore: Summer and strawberries. It gives me great, great pleasure to hop on an aeroplane and escape at least one month of what I deem to be winter misery in South Africa. I live in a house without heaters, or electric blankets, and only hot water bottles tucked into our pants and between our blankets to warm us. This morning at 7am I went for a crisp morning run and chuckled (a little gleefully I confess) at the thought of my friends at home still enveloped in a dark chill.

Strawberries scream summer. In Smitten Kitchen  Deb writes of rainy weather combined with strawberry purchases that causes a bit of a dilemma. I know what she means. I bought a red mountain of half- priced berries from Waitrose intending to make a chilled strawberry soup. The constant, characteristically English drizzle outside did not invite chilled soup. Rather, it invited warm carbohydrates that were reminsicent of summer but with due regard for the downpour outside. I googled strawberry cake, as I am sure many have before me.. and came upon this gem that I’ve now made twice since in four days.

Please see this link for the recipe as I found it:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/05/strawberry-summer-cake/

The first time I made it, I scattered pistachios on top  ten minutes before the end of cooking and baked it in a sort of pie dish (that turned out to be tricky to serve). For round two I used a cake tin, and added 2 tablespoons of almonds to the mixture for a bit more richness.

                                     

Also, when following Deb/slash Martha’s recipe, I do the following:

Instead of adding the dry mixture after the wet ingredients, I make a mixture of egg and milk and add it alternately with the dry mixture of flour, baking powder and salt. I add the vanilla last (and I use vanilla bean paste, oh- glory). This prevents it curdling. Not that I’ve ever known a once- curdled mixture to be of lesser taste… but I just feel more satisfied if it stays smooth throughout!

Since it was a chilly summer evening (annoying actually, considering it was the summer solstice and the druids were all doing their thing at Stonehenge etc) I warmed it up in the oven before serving. M made a glorious runny vanilla bean custard to go alongside.

Vanilla sponge seeped with fresh strawberries.

Yes, please. 

Pistachio and Dark Chocolate Ice- cream

I'm obsessed with the new Krupps Ice- cream maker. Ooh. There is no end to the options. Today I adapted a Sharon Glass recipe for pistachio ice- cream. The result was something truly yum, if you like ice-cream with loads of crunch and pow-wow. Cool thing is, I made half in the ice- cream machine and the remainder by the hand- whisking method. Both worked! Ha! Yes. Anyone can make ice- cream.

As you can see, my hand slipped a little with the forest green food colouring. Which left things with a little lumo- blueish tint. Ah well. All's well that tastes delicious.

Pistachio and Dark Chocolate Ice- cream.

Chichifregi, chiboust and a Queenly Quiche

Ah. I’m so in love with my Larousse Gastrominique. It’s full of stuff no one cooks anymore but oh! I can never look one thing up without flipping through a few pages in interest. My version is from 1988, the year I was born in (what a great gift, thanks Dad). It is filled with terrible photographs of drab food that often involve a lot of aspic, and other garish things like cock’s combs used for garnish, and canned pineapple.

Well hey, I reckon. It’s not their fault that cucumber garnish was in and photoshop hadn’t been invented yet.

I was just wondering what to do with the whole half- smoked turkey that I never used for Christmas- hmmm. Maybe I should just stuff it with truffles and wrap it in puff pastry? Titan, old- school chef August Escoffier (who prefaced the origianl Larousse) would probably dig it. In fact, he would suggest another block of butter and litre of cream.

Today I was looking up the word chiboust. As it turns out, the person Chiboust was a 19^th century pastry chef who invented the Saint-Honoré cake, in honour of the patron saint of pastry cooks and bakers.

The chiboust page in my Larousse also contains entries for Chicken where the explanation reads: “A domestic fowl reared (raised) for both its meat and eggs”. I searched the same term on Wikipedia and found a similar explanation. Thus, the Larousse takes itself very seriously as a dictionary, even kindly giving us a synonym for the word rearing. Sweet.

It makes sense- what did all those people who had never seen a chicken before do in 1988? When google was still a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin? The Larousse was a history book, source book, and encyclopedia all in one.

The Chiboust page also contains an entry for chichifregi, “a type of fritter from the region of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.”

I wiki’d it: and found zilch. Ka-Pow. Furthermore, Google had nothing to offer but a few dodgy french sites. (Sounds of a mechanized rifle going off… bang.)

That’s one for the Larousse.  

Granadilla Chiboust

Sunset Barcelona

Funny thing is: I've never been to Barcelona. Or Spain.

But I have seen some sunsets in my time. And some of them had the colours yellow, ruby red and brown in. Sort of.

Truth is: This recipe was conceived in faraway Barcelona and I figured I should attribute it. See, Mrs Y went there two years ago on holiday. She and Mister Y couldn't find the restaurant they were meant to go to, so they ducked into some little hidden treasure close to their hotel, and the chef produced something like this.

I tried to re- create it according to what Mrs Y told me about the dessert. I tried different layers. I tried to bake the orange jelly.  I considered using cornflour. And then this little creation popped out and got my tastebuds all in a tizz. You know how sublime dark chocolate and orange is? I have always raved about the flavour marriage. Henceforth I will always recommend a menage- a-trois with raspberry.

Sunset Barcelona

For the jelly:

• zest of 2 oranges
• 250ml freshly squeezed orange juice
• 15ml castor sugar (leave out if your oranges are sweet enough)
• 5ml powdered gelatine
• 50ml water

For the mousse: 

• 100g 50%-60% dark cocoa chocolate
• 100g 70% dark chocolate
• 60ml dark filter coffee
• 1 tablespoon (15ml) butter
• 3 eggs, separated

For the raspberry layer: 

• 300g fresh, beautiful, bursting raspberries ( the only kind worth money)
• 100g castor sugar
• 30ml water
• squeeze lemon juice

1. Place the orange zest, juice and sugar (if using) in a sauce pan and warm up. 
2. Place the 50ml water in a glass jusg and sprinkle the gelatine over. Nuke in the microwave for 10 seconds at a time, checking after each go to see if the gelatine has dissolved. It won't take more than a minute. Add to the orange juice mixture. Divide between 6 pretty glasses ( you can use whiskey glasses, martini glasses, whatever floats your boat) and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
3. Place a saucepan of water over low heat. Place chocolate, butter and coffee in a glass bowl and place over pan until melted, stirring about a bit every now and then. 
4. Remove from the heat and beat in the egg yolks. 
5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold in in three stages. 
6. Divide between the glasses and carefully place on top of jelly. Return to fridge for 3-4 hours.
7. Place the castor sugar, water and lemon juice over medium- low heat, whisking to dissolve the castor sugar. Allow to boil for 2 minutes then add the raspberries. Leave on the heat for one minute then remove. Blend in food processor and allow to cool. 
8. Just before serving, spoon the raspberry coulis over the mousse. Now indulge. Ooh la la.

Black Pepper Plum!

Black pepper and plum ice- cream

The year was 2007 and the first year chefs at Silwood all had to submit their entries to The Flavour Challenge. I had plums, I had red wine, and I had an easy- peasy ice- cream recipe. 

When I added the pepper, the grinder broke and a stream of black dropped into the mixture. 'What the hell' I thought, and didn't bother to pick the peppercorns out. The result was mouth- puckering. 

The ice- cream base recipe is not exactly ideal- but for the home- cook with no ice- cream machine ( I'm still waiting for mine to be delivered) its quite handy. 

• 1/2  box Orley whip (a dairy substitute found in the refrigerator section in major supermarkets- use only one sachet) 
• 1/2  cup (125ml) castor sugar
• 1/2 tin ideal milk, refrigerated overnight ( I pop it in the freezer for a 2- 3 hours if I've forgotten)
• 800g ripe red plums, halved or quartered, pips removed and nasty bits cuts out
• 700ml of your favourite red wine ( Yes, I only use 700ml so that the cook can drink the remaining 50ml)
• squeeze of lemon juice
• 100g castor sugar
• 40ml freshly ground black pepper

1. Place the wine, castor sugar and lemon juice in a large saucepan and bring up to heat gradually, whisking until the sugar is dissolved. Add the plums and poach until soft but not disintegrating. 
2. Remove the plums with a slotted spoon and place in a blender. Blitz to a puree and push through a sieve (or if you don't mind bits of skin, just leave it). 
3. Reduce the remaining red wine mixture to a dark syrup and set aside.  
4. Use an electric beater to beat the Orley whip until soft peaks form. Gradually add half the castor sugar whilst beating. Place in a bowl and freeze for 30 minutes. 
5. Beat the ideal milk until soft peaks form and gradually add the remaining sugar. 
6. Combine the Orley whip mixture and Ideal milk mixture with the puree, freshly ground pepper and a little of the syrup. 
7. Pour into a rectangular container (an old ice- cream tub is a great size) and freeze for 4- 5 hours or until nearly firm. Carefully pour over the syrup and strir enough to make dark red streaks in the pink mixture. Freeze until firm ( preferably overnight) 
8. Serve as is. I wouldn't complicate it with much else- unless you have a dark chocolate torte lying around (as one does)

Colour me green

I never coloured in the lines when I was little. I wasn’t patient enough. But I’m quite sure that my grass was always green, my rivers and skies blue and my mud as stinking brown as I could make it.

I detest it when food doesn’t taste like the colour it is. When I did a stint at The Five Flies restaurant in Cape Town, I was amazed to see the pastry chef add green food colouring to her crème anglaise. I then expected to see peeled pistachios going in, or mint essence- but alas.

Horror!

It looked green and tasted vanilla.

Similarly, I like it if food is, well, the colour it sounds like. After making Rick Stein’s green curry paste I could see that something was seriously amiss. I delved into the fridge, only to find that my fresh coriander had gone over to the dark side. I desperately groped around and found some red salad onions. In my pursuit for colouring perfection, I finely chopped the lime- coloured heads off all my salad onions and added them to the paste. It was delicious and my conscious could rest.

To the same tune, it highly offends me to see garnish that is not applicable to the dish. There seems to be an underlying chef’s obsession with seeing green on a plate. I can understand why, as green is lovely colour (my favourite in fact) and it certainly does liven things up. But seeing roughly chopped parsley scattered around the rim of my plate makes me cross.

And whole trees of rosemary poking out of mashed potato piles just look stupid.

As it happens,  one of my freezers defrosted today because some buffoon (probably me) left the door open. I lost meat, 2 rolls of cookie dough and a frozen dessert I had been picking on for a while. But a tray of sweet baby pastry cases had semi- survived so I baked them off for the hell of it.

Scrounging around the fridge, I found some left over ganache from my minted Christmas macaroons. Light bulbs flashed like it was Christmas in Adderley Street and chocolate mint tartlets with summer berries took shape.

I poked some baby mint leaves between the berries on top of my tarts with the happy knowledge that they were true to my theme: a hint at the minted, scrumptious chocolate ganache that awaits the eater; and not a trick as cruel as the hollow Easter egg I once got next to my brother's solid one.  

the Most refreshing dessert

My customers like to keep it light. This is the least heavy dessert I could think of, it's tasty, refreshing, and well, it has jelly in it. Anything with jelly = fun.

Cranberry jelly with plums, litchis and mint

Serves 8 ( reduce amount of fresh fruit for less people)

You don't have to use all the different juices just cranberry is good, in fact, you can try any fruit juice you like. 

• 350ml cranberry juice ( liquifruit’s cranberry and apple works well)
• 100ml pomegranate juice ( available from Woolworths)
• 50ml clear apple juice
• 100g castor sugar
• 10g powdered gelatine

For the dessert:

• 5 ripe plums, sliced
• 10 litchis, peeled, de- pipped and halved
• 200g blueberries
• Handful of mint, chiffonaded (keep a few whole)
• Zest of 1- 2 limes

1. For the jelly, place all the juice in a saucepan and add the sugar. Whisk over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved then bring to the boil for two minutes. Remove from heat
2. Place 30ml of water in a glass jug and sprinkle the gelatine on top. Place in the microwave for 10 -20 seconds until the gelatine has dissolved. Add to the hot cranberry mixture.
3. Pour into a square or rectangular plastic container that is not too large or shallow. You want to cut the jelly into cubes so it should be either  one or two cm deep when you pour it in. Refrigerate for eight hours or overnight.
4. To serve, place the fruit randomly on a platter, sprinkle with the lime zest and mint. Un-mould the jelly and cut into 1 or 2 cm cubes and dot around. You might not use all the jelly- keep the rest in fridge, what a treat. 

words cannot describe yesterday, today

Prawn, asparagus, mascarpone tarts

Frozen lemon meringue cake

Christmas Mince Pies

Devil- red macaroons

Oysters with vodka, cucumber and mint jelly.

Christmas Eve Croquembouche