New Year

New Year's Eve was spent snuggled up in bed, feasting on homemade cranberry and marzipan pie, macarons from Laduree, and fizzy pink hibiscus-flavoured wine (cheaper and tastier than Buck's Fizz, but no more sophisticated). 

The pie was thrown together in a jiffy, in order to use up some leftover egg whites and bland shortbread. All you need are:

- some shortbread and butter (for the base)

- cranberries and marzipan (for the filling)

- and egg whites and sugar for the meringue.

Crush the biscuits and add butter to it, then place the mixture in the bottom of your pie tray. Cut up about 100gms of marzipan into bite-sized cubes, then add about the same amount of cranberries, and place them on top of the biscuit mixture. Make up your favourite meringue recipe, pour it over the pie and bake it. It's great on it's own, but a spoonful of plain ice-cream alongside never hurts!

It's not the most accurate recipe, but I wasn't taking note of the amounts I was using, because it was New Year's Eve and who can be bothered being pedantic with a pie on New Year's Eve?

Quinces For Princes

Ok, I've been tardy with posting a recipe for the quince pies I made for Christmas, but here it is, at last! It's a fairly easy recipe, and everything can be thrown together quickly once you've poached the quinces. If quinces can't be found, or you just can't be bothered with them, then I don't see why you can't substitute them for some other fruits.

Ingredients:

1 kg quinces (about 3 or 4)

4 small apples (I used Braeburns, but use whichever ones you like)

1 kg puff pastry

1 cinnamon stick

1 tsp nutmeg

2 heaped tbs sugar/honey

1 egg, beaten

200 gms apricot glaze (optional)

Makes about 24 individual pies.

- Cut quinces up into quarters and remove the seeds.

- There are two different ways to soften the quinces - the way is to poach them in a large amount of water (enough to just cover the tops of the fruits), with spices added for taste. I ended up with about 2 pints of lovely pink fruit-flavoured liquid at the end, and simply added some gelatin to it to make quince jelly.

The other method is similar, except you use less water - put the quinces and spices into a large pot or saucepan, then add an inch of water to it.

Whichever method you choose, you'll need to simmer it for at least two hours. Stir them occasionally to prevent them sticking to the bottom and burning.

- After one hour, quarter the apples and add them to the pot, and simmer for another hour.

- Test the fruits after two hours, they should be soft enough to mash with a fork. If not, cook them for a little longer.

- If you're poaching the fruits, remove them from the liquid and leave to cool and drain for at least 15 minutes. If you're using the second method, the liquid should have evaporated and been absorbed by the fruits by now.

- Mash the fruits up roughly, you want some texture when you bite into the pies. I found it easiest to just use a potato masher.

- Cut and place puff pastry into muffin trays (be sure to leave enough pastry for the tops). Spoon the fruit mixture in, then cut more puff pastry circles for the tops. Brush the tops with a beaten egg.

Bake in a preheated oven for the time and temperature specified on your puff pastry packaging - I think I left them in for about 20 mins at about 200 degrees Celsius.

- Leave them to cool on a rack once they're done.

- This step is entirely optional, I did it because I always overindulge my sweet tooth. Put some apricot glaze in a saucepan and boil it, then, with a brush, brush it over the tops of the pies for a shiny finish.

That's about it, and like I said, really easy to assemble once the fruits are cooked. If you're pressed for time, you can always cook the quinces a couple of days before, then spoon them into the pastry cases and bake them on the day itself. The pies can be kept for up to a week if stored properly, and they're delicious reheated in the microwave, with a dollop of vanilla bean ice-cream over it.

As I haven't had too much experience with writing up my own recipes, please do let me know if you spot any mistakes in this one. And if you do use it, I'd love to hear how you got on with it!

A Year of P's and Q's

Quinces are rather neglected fruits, don't you think? Sure, pomegranates are pretty, and pretty fashionable these days, and apples and pears make for stalwart kitchen companions, while durians always get their moment in the spotlight whenever some middle-aged, middle-class TV host decides to film a 'daredevil eating adventure'. But what about the humble, oft-forgotten quince?

Looking (and tasting) somewhat like a lumpy, yellow cross between an apple and a pear, the quince can be eaten raw, although it's slightly  sour,  crunchy bite may not be to everyone's taste. However, should you spend some time cooking it gently, you'll be rewarded with a tasty dish laced with a delicate, rosy perfume.

The quinces had started appearing at the grumpy grocer's down the hill about a month ago, sparking off my current quince obsession. Honestly, I don't even know why I keep thinking about quinces, since all I've ever really had of them has been in the form of quince cheese - those deep red blocks of stewed, jelly-like quince paste that go so well with cheese. Because I haven't had much experience with quinces before, I restrained myself from buying up a box of them, until I could think of a suitable reason excuse to start stockpiling. The excuse came last week, when a friend suggested we have a Christmas meal together, and share the cooking. To which I replied 'Well, I'll just HAVE to make a quince pie!'.

Dissatisfied with most of the recipes I came across, I decided to come up with a simple one of my own over the weekend. As it was an experiment, I used store-bought shortcrust pastry, which I deeply regret -insomnia, unhelpful baking beads and stupid broken pastry all contributed to a dramatic bout of tears in the kitchen. The Mancreature may be off in his own little post-apocalyptic digital world most of the time, but he does have his uses, and saved the day by saving my pie.

I'll be refining the recipe and posting it soon, but here's a short run-down of what I did. I got 3 large quinces (which came to just over a kilo) and 4 little Braeburn apples (I'm not an apple expert at all, I only knew they were Braeburns coz the sticker told me so), and poached them for about two hours in a slowly simmering pot of water, with rosewater, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar all thrown in for flavour.

Once I took the fruits out of the poaching liquid, I was left with a beautifully cloudy, soft pink liquid, which I thought was too pretty to throw away. It tasted of the quinces and apples that had been soaking in it for the last couple of hours, so I decided to make some jelly with it on the spur of the moment. All I had to do was add two packets of gelatin, stir it through, then pour the mixture into little containers. I put them on the balcony because there was no space in the fridge, and when I checked on them a few hours later, they had set! I have a balcony-sized fridge!

Also, it's exactly a year ago today that I started up this blog. I chose to forgo a proper introduction and simply rambled on about my unfinished Moebius cowl (which I still wear). It's been a year, and nearly 100 posts of me ranting and rambling on about eating and making! I hope I've been at least a little entertaining, if not very useful, and to those of you who've been checking in every so often to find out what's been happening in this little world, thank you so much! My 100th post in coming up very shortly, and I'm going to do a giveaway soon to celebrate this whole 'blogiversary' business, so check back in a little bit!

Ladies Courtyard Picnic

What do a bunch of unemployed girls do on a hot summer's day?

Well, they get together, dress like ladies, and sit around a courtyard eating dessert all day!

To celebrate our liberation from the shackles of working for 'Tha Man', Jojo, Googy and I hit upon the idea of organising a Ladies Courtyard Picnic (for unemployed ladies and gents only!). The plan was for us to eat lots of sweet things, drink some G&Ts (mumma's little helper...) and bake more sweet things.

Instead of baking Satan cakes like we usually do, Googy and I decided to try something new. Now that we're unemployed, we can bake anything we feel like baking...even things we've never actually tasted before! That's how you live life on the edge. Not being from North America and having never celebrated Thanksgiving before, neither of us had ever had a pumpkin pie. I mean, pumpkin is meant to be a savoury food, isn't it?

So we googled some recipes and pictures, and it turned out to be fairly easy to make. The first picture we found also made it look really, really disgustingly tasty. Like, so tasty but so sweet that your tongue would shrivel up and fall out. That sealed the deal for me - we would be making pumpkin pie. And, just to add a little more excitement to our lives, we decided to mix things up a bit by substituting half the pumpkin goo with sweet potato goo.

On the day of the picnic, Googy and I decided to ride to Jojo's. But on the way there, we stopped off to see the Tree Man.
There he is, in the background, sitting beside me. It's a shit photo, I'll try and get a better one the next time I go past him.

By the time Googy and I got to Jojo's, we were both sticky and sweaty and stinky from riding. Not very ladylike at all, I'm afraid. But at least I rode wearing a nice dress and headscarf. That always makes up for sweaty, sticky, stinkiness. Plus, I also had a nice little apron that I'd made the day before. All very ladylike (except for the charging-madly-around-town-on-a-BMX bit).
We were greeted by Jojo and Phoebe, and presented with a MOUNTAIN of baked goods - chocolate chip cookies, raspberry and white chocolate muffins, and shortbread. And also some smoked salmon sandwiches and very tasty curried egg sandwiches (yum...curried egg fart...).
After munching through a sizeable portion of the baked goods mountain, we thought it might be a good time to start flexing our muscles. Isn't that what all good ladies do after lunch? Then it was time to for pumpkin and sweet potato pie goodness. And sweetbabyjesus...was it good!

Here are some photos of the goodness, freshly unleashed from the oven. Also some photos of us in the kitchen looking happy and successful and greedy. Mainly greedy.
See that mountain of pumpkin pie? It's still sitting in my fridge. We made way too much. If anyone wants some, get in touch and I'll pass the tastiness on to you. Or you can just make it yourself. It's so easy I won't even post instructions or a recipe.