The Rhubarb Fool

The first proper frost arrived earlier this month which meant it was finally time to gather the first tiny crop of medlars from the tree we planted the summer before last.   Jane Grigson writes about the medlar in her “Fruit Book” as follows.  “The medlar makes a charming tree in the garden.  It grows and droops over to make a sheltered house for children to play in.  In spring, the flowers are white spreading cups. In autumn the leaves turn a deep yet brilliant red, and fall to show the greenish brown medlars displaying their ancient name.  Pick them when they begin to turn soft and darker brown, and do not despise the windfalls.  The best can be eaten as they are.  Turn the others into medlar jelly.”  She is quite right – the medlar has so far proved to be an excellent small tree though not yet large enough to droop into the sheltered house for children she refers to.

Amusingly, the ancient descriptive English name for the medlar is openarse (similarly cul de chien in French)  You will understand why we politely refer to it as the medlar now (nèfle in French).

Here are my medlars, silhouetted against a palest blue wintry sky.

As the crop was so tiny and as I’ve never eaten them before, I decided the only thing to do was to eat the medlars, now yieldingly soft (the proper term is bletted) au naturel with a teaspoon.  I arranged them artfully on a plate with some other seasonal items to form a cut-down version of the 13 desserts of Provence (for an explanation see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_desserts)

I took my first mouthful rather nervously but needn’t have worried as they tasted rather good – like stewed apple with a fudgy texture and pleasant acidity.  A small glass of tawny port and a few walnuts were the perfect accompaniment.  The 5 or so large seeds each fruit contains were unexpected but easily dealt with.

Other ideas for medlars are the jelly recipe which Jane Grigson gives and stewed medlars/compote of medlars which is the only suggestion given in Larousse Gastronomique.

I lazily popped one of the kumquats on the above platter into my mouth expecting an aromatic little sweetmeat.  I nearly spat the thing out.  Aromatic it certainly was but sour and bitter too in equal measure.  Referring back to my trusty Jane Grigson Fruit Book I discovered that she recommends coating them in fondant to make a tart, sweet and crisp petit four. She also gives a recipe for pickled kumquats with orange slices which I though might go well with the wild duck I was planning to roast for Sunday dinner.  Here are the duck (plus two brace of partridge) which my hunter gatherer husband Tim brought back from  a day’s shooting at Carlton Towers in Yorkshire in the autumn.  He cleaned and plucked them too and they have been waiting in my freezer for their moment to shine ever since.

I made the pickle and we ate it the same day with the duck notwithstanding that it is meant to mature for at least a month before you eat it.  The recipe is given below.

Unsurprisingly, the pickle was rather sharp!  The flavour of the kumquats was definitely right with the wild duck but it was too sweet and sharp in this pickle.  The pickle would however be very good with Christmas ham.

If anyone has any kumquat or medlar recipes I would love to hear them.

As a final postscript, peeking into my Christmas stocking I see that my sister-in-law Angela who lives in Bristol has given me, quite by coincidence, a jar of stewed medlars. I would guess that these were sourced from her local farmer’s market – I’m looking forward to trying them.

Recipe for pickled kumquats with orange slices

From Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book

My own suggestion is that fragrant clementine slices can be substituted for orange slices very successfully.

For each 250g (8oz) kumquats, provide one large orange (or 3 small clementines) which has been well scrubbed.  The kumquats only need rinsing.

Slice away and discard the peel ends of the orange, then cut the rest into slices and put them in a wide pan with the kumquats and enough water to cover generously.  Bring to simmering point, and leave until the orange slices are tender.  If the kumquats show signs of over-cooking and collapse, remove them.

Meanwhile dissolve 300g (10 oz) sugar in 250 ml (8 fl oz) wine vinegar.  Add a 5 cm (2 inch) cinnamon stick, 8 whole cloves and 2 blades of mace.  Once the liquid is clear and reaches boiling point, stop stirring.

Drain the cooking liquor from the oranges and kumquats into a bowl.  Pour the syrup onto them, adding enough cooking liquor to cover the fruit.  Simmer until the orange slices look transparent and slightly candied, adding extra cooking liquor as required.

Arrange the fruit in a wide glass jar, rinsed and dried upside down in a low oven.  Cut the slices in two, three, four if you like.  Pour on the boiling vinegar syrup, making sure that the fruit is covered.  Fasten the lid tightly and leave in a cool dark place for at least a month to mature.

There are 7 of us in the book group to which I’ve belonged for a few years now.  We meet every month to discuss our chosen book but in December we put the books aside and just get together for a meal and conversation.  Following on from last year’s very successful cheese fondue at Gwyneth’s I offered to host lunch on a Friday in early December.

December is a busy time.  At work everyone wants the job done before Christmas.  At school there are fairs to be organised and costumes to be prepared for christmas plays and concerts.  At home there are cards, presents and food to be taken care of as well as all the usual routines.  Inevitably the washing machine or fridge will pack up in December (as mine just has) and to round things off nicely, the workmen who’ve been promising to turn up all year will finally make an appearance just when they’re no longer wanted.  I decided that what we all needed was a Superfoods Lunch.  The ideas was to boost our energy levels and immune systems before the rigours of Christmas preparations.  And of course the food had to taste good and look inviting.

There seems to be no standard definition of what a Superfood is.  This BBC article is a helpful and quick summary of the status of superfoods  – really a marketing tag more than anything.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/superfoods.shtml.  Nevertheless, running through the lists of superfoods that various celebrity nutrionists have put together (take you pick from what’s available on the web), I soon had inspiration for a lunch.  We would have a spicy butternut squash soup to start, packed with sage, chilli and garlic for extra flavour. Next, there would be two salads, one based on quinoa and roast vegetables (beetroot and red onion as well as yet more squash) together with cranberries and seeds, the other a more green leafy one featuring watercress and spinach, avocado, pistachio nuts and pomegranate seeds.  I managed to find a red quinoa for the roast vegetable salad which both looked more appetising than the regular white kind and retained a bit more bite.

I neither followed nor wrote down a proper recipe for the salads, it was more a question of tasting and adding as I went along but resisting the urge to throw in too many ingredients.  For the quinoa salad, I cooked the red quinoa according the packet instructions and dressed it with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and lemon juice while it was still warm.  I then stirred in chopped parsley and chives, lightly cooked cranberries, and salt and pepper.  I tipped the dressed quinoa into a salad bowl lined with crisp red radicchio leaves then topped the salad with chunks of roast beetroot, squash and red onion.  I then blobbed on pieces of mild goats cheese and sprinkled everything with linseeds and roast sesame and sunflower seeds.  Finally I snipped some extra chives over for colour.

The other salad was an assembly of different salad leaves and chopped avocado in a lemony vinaigrette with pomegranate seeds and pistachios sprinkled over the top.

My guests brought either bread for the soup (special mention to Gwyneth’s tomato bread fresh baked that morning) or something for pudding.  Alison made a stunning dish of apple pancakes from windfalls in her garden (thanks for the extras Alison – I’ve used them variously in soup, as and addition to braised red cabbage and finally in an Eve’s Pudding).  Pictured below are Marian’s muesli slices and Nadia’s chocolate cake – both absolutely delicious.

Lunch concluded with an exchange of Secret Santa gifts, which were of course books.  I received “The Secret Scripture” by Sebastian Barry which will be my reading over the Christmas holidays.  Can’t wait to get started on it.

Recipe for butternut squash soup with garlic and chilli

This recipe is the pumpkin soup recipe from from Lindsey Bareham’s book “A Celebration of Soup”.  A decent cooking pumpkin is hard to find at the best of times but butternut squash, its close relation, is readily available. Lindsey Bareham tells us that this recipe is chef Sally Clarke’s version from the book “Women Chefs of Britain”.  The ingredients given below serve 6.

Ingredients

1 large butternut squash (original recipe specifies 1 medium pumpkin, preferably a green-skinned variety)
75 ml (scant 3 fl oz olive oil)
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage leaves
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 leek, roughly chopped
2 sticks celery, roughly chopped
1/2 fennel bulb, roughly chopped
2 small red chilli peppers chopped very fine
1.75 litres (3 pints) – maybe a little less if your pumpkin/squash is on the small side
salt to taste (recipe suggests 2 teaspoons)

to garnish – any or all of the following:

roast pumpkin seeds sprinkled with a little salt, either seeds from the pumpkin you used to make the soup or a packet of pumpkin seeds which you roast yourself (see below)
chopped parsley
extra virgin olive oil or chilli flavoured oil

Prepare the pumpkin or squash by peeling, seeding and cutting into 2.5 cm/ 1 inch cubes. Reserve the seeds for roasting if you like.

Heat the 75ml/3 fl oz olive oil and stir fry the garlic and sage until aromatic but don’t let it burn.  Add the onion, leek, celery, fennel, pumpkin/squash and chillis, and increase the heat slightly, stirring around until the vegetables begin to soften.  Cover with the water (the recipe suggests 3 pints but I’ve found through trial and error that this can be a bit too much – try 2 pints and add more during cooking if required) and bring to the boil, then simmer gently, half-covered, until all the vegetables are soft.  Purée to a smooth consistency.  If you like your soup very smooth, pass through a medium sieve into a clean pan.  I use a stick blender directly in the soup pan and don’t bother with a sieve. Check for consistency. Boil to reduce if too thin, add more water if too thick.  Check seasoning.

If you are roasting the seeds you extracted earlier from the pumpkin, wash them under cold running water then lay the cleaned seeds on a baking tray, drizzle them with a little vegetable oil and sprinkle with a little salt.  Bake for 10-15 minutes at 375 degrees F, 190 degrees C, gas mark 5, turning with a spoon occasionally, until they are golden brown and crisp to the bite.  If you are using a packet of seeds, proceed in the same way (but no need to rinse them under cold water first) but they will need less time in the oven as they are drier.  Watch them like a hawk as they will turn from golden to burnt in a matter of moments.

Serve garnished with the roast pumpkin seeds plus a drizzle of olive oil or chilli flavoured oil and chopped parsley if you like.

We are a thoroughly English family living in Manchester but nevertheless have celebrated Thanksgiving for the last four years.  This is down to my friend Lorilee who comes from West Coast of the US but now lives over here.  Sitting in her kitchen as she was preparing for her annual family celebration there was a wonderful bronze turkey on the table ready for stuffing, and delicious smells of cranberries and pumpkin pie spice wafting through the house.  I was seduced and we’ve been doing our own Thanksgiving ever since.

It’s a great way to celebrate the beginning of advent and to get together with family and friends that you won’t see on Christmas Day itself.  For us, it’s free of the weight of expectation and tradition that comes with Christmas, a blank canvas which we’ve made our own.

This year, we invited in-laws Monica and Lawrie over, plus son Arthur’s schoolfriend Rahin.  We made a bit of an effort to smarten up the house and even went so far as to hang corncobs from the door to welcome guests:

The main event was of course a wonderful bronze turkey from local supplier the Cheshire Smokehouse together with cranberry and cornbread stuffing. The stuffing is a pleasure to make, wonderful colours and smells from both the cranberries gently cooked with orange:

and from the golden cornbread:

Here is the stuffed turkey being ritually weighed on my trusty Avery Berkel scales.  This set of scales has a bit of history behind it having been sold to me some years ago by the Hon Rupert Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill.  Rupert was running a division of the the Avery business in Smethwick and I was visiting from head office and bought some of his old stock.

The scales have since become part of the family – both my two boys as babies were regularly weighed in them and they are now used for weighing ceremonial roasts.

And here is the finished turkey:

I used to have terrible trouble with turkey but have since discovered the method recommended by Leith’s Cookery Bible which is to drape over the turkey before it goes into the oven an enormous square of folded muslin soaked in an unfeasible quantity of melted butter.  This combined with a digital meat thermometer inserted into the thigh of the bird seems to do the trick.  My thermometer tells me turkey is cooked when its internal temperature reaches 82 degrees C; I find that I need to remove the bird from the oven when it reaches just 73 degrees C as the heat carries on transferring through the meat for a good 20 to 30 minutes afterwards.

With the turkey I served, as well as the aforementioned stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, roast winter vegetables and a dish of sweet potatoes topped with toasted marshmallows – improbably sweet and weird but nevertheless good.

Afterwards, instead of the more usual pumpkin or pecan pies, I served crema catalana, the Spanish orange and cinnamon scented version of crème brûlée together with a dish of sliced oranges in orange juice flavoured with grated lemon peel.  I know this Spanish element is from the wrong continent entirely but somehow the colours of the crema catalanas, burnished gold in their  terracotta cazuelas and the cinnamon and citrus flavours seem just right for a winter celebration which is a precursor to Christmas.

Here is a single perfect crema catalana in the tiniest of authentic cazuelas:

And here are the sliced oranges displayed in my favourite midnight blue and yellow serving bowl.  I had a pomegranate and a couple of passionfruit lurking in my fruitbowl so added these to the oranges for a pleasingly  jewelled effect:

I’ll conclude now with recipes for both the stuffing and the crema catalana.

Recipe for cornbread, cranberry and orange stuffing

This recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s book “Feast” with just a few small modifications of my own.

Ingredients for the cornbread

175g cornmeal (I use instant polenta)
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
pinch salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
250 ml milk
1 egg
45g butter, melted and cooled slightly

Ingredients for the stuffing

1 large orange
340g cranberries, fresh or frozen
2 tablespoons runny honey
125g butter
500g cornbread crumbs
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
salt and pepper

First make the cornbread.  Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200 degrees C then prepare  a square 23 cm tin (5cm deep) either by greasing with butter or lining with baking paper.    Mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl.  In a measuring jug beat together the milk, egg and melted and cooled butter.  Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring with a wooden spoon until just combined but no more – the odd lump is desirable at this stage.  Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 15-20 minutes.  When ready, the cornbread should just be shrinking from the sides.  Most of the cornbread is needed for the stuffing but there should be just enough for one slice for the cook to eat, still warm from the oven and spread with butter.

Now complete the stuffing.  Zest and juice the orange.  Put the cranberries into a heavy based saucepan along with the zest and juice of the orange.  Bring to simmering point on a moderately high heat on the stove top, then add the honey then cover the pan and turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  Add the butter to the pan allowing it to melt then add the cornbread crumbs.  I simply break up the warm cornbread with a fork to give desirably rough-textured uneven crumbs.  Beat in the eggs along with the ground cinnamon plus a little salt and pepper.

Recipe for crema catalana

I found this recipe on the web after returning from an inspirational trip to Barcelona in October 2005.  It came from a US site with the unpromising sounding name of Cook’n Grill’n but claimed to originate from Barcelona landmark restaurant Set Portes which I visited on my trip.  The recipe works and tastes authentic.  The recipe I found required no less than 7 egg yolks and stated that it served 4 people.  My cut-down version requires 5 yolks and makes approximately 8 tiny pots.  The four people envisaged in the original recipe must have been very greedy indeed…

Ingredients

12 fl oz milk (whole or semi skimmed)
6 fl oz double cream
2 one inch pieces cinnamon stick
2 strips lemon zest and 2 strips orange zest (each 2 inches by 1/2 inch removed with a vegetable peeler)
2 and 1/2 oz golden caster sugar
5 egg yolks from large eggs
1 and 3/4 tablespoons plain flour

more golden caster sugar for caramelising surface of the creams

Combine the milk, cream, orange and lemon zests and cinnamon sticks in a medium sized heavy based saucepan and bring almost up to a simmer on a low heat.  Let the mixture cook for about 10 minutes so that the milk and cream become infused with the cinnamon and citrus but do not let it boil.  Remove from the heat, cover to prevent a skin forming and allow to cool a little.

Whisk together the sugar and egg yolks in a medium sized bowl.  Whisk in the flour.  Strain the infused milk and cream mixture into the yolk mixture in a thin stream and whisk to mix.  Return this mixture to the saucepan and bring gradually to simmering point over a low heat, whisking steadily.  The mixture must be allowed to thicken and cook otherwise it will not set.  Do not allow to boil rapidly or overcook or the custard will curdle.

Once the mixture has thickened, divide it between 8 small gratin dishes.  Individual terracotta cazuelas are authentic if you have them – this is how the crema is served in Barcelona.    I bought mine online back in the UK from http://www.delicioso.co.uk/spanish-food/Kitchenware/

Cover the creams with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

When you are ready to serve, remove the creams from the fridge and sprinkle the surface of each one with 2 teaspoons golden caster sugar.  Quickly caramelise using a kitchen blowtorch.