Busy in the Kitchen

The print-room in C's work have bound 3 photo-calendars that C made. Well, so far they've bound the one that headed off to Australia - the other two will be going in on Monday. So I wanted to send in some biscuits as a thank-you, and also my Secret Santa likes cookies...this morning I made a big double batch of peanut-butter cookies and some Baklava for our weekend treat. I also made a big pot of lamb curry, a beef and Guinness stew to have when an Italian friend visits on Tuesday, and a beef and vegetable casserole. I don't anticipate having a lot of cooking to do this week!
I was out in the garden - I've been seeing this fading beauty of a poppy out of the corner of my eye, but in the bright sunshine this morning it was worth going over for a second look, and then getting the camera. I was tidying up my memory cards from the camera, copying everything over to the PC - quite startled to see how few pictures I took in November. I suppose we didn't have the weather.



A book to read: Bright Earth:The Invention of Colour by Philip Ball. I read it some years back, and for the last while it's been on my bedside waiting to read again. He starts with the early cave-painters, through the Greeks with their basic colour palette and right up to the modern day. It's seeing all the rich nativity blues and reds at the moment that has reminded me of it; as the most expensive pigments in the Middle Ages, they were used sparingly, and only when painting special characters. He writes about the early age of synthetic colours, when nobody realised how fugitive some colours were, so that artists would be surprised to see what their paintings now look like. Certainly I remember that when I worked in the fine-art supplies field, permanence was still the Holy Grail for some colours. I remember too that artist's quality ultramarine was unavailable for some time, because it used Lapis Lazuli, and it was, back then, in short supply because of the war (with the Russians) in Afghanistan, where most of it came from.

A hotch potch of scraps.

I had to make a quiche for work last Friday. We were out on Thursday night, so I made the pastry and cooked the bacon and onion, and left myself a list of everything to remember at 6.30 on Friday morning. After I had my shower and while the quiche was still in the oven, I realised I'd forgotten the extra-mature cheese I'd specially bought. To put it bluntly, I'd forgotten to add any cheese at all. No wonder there didn't seem to be as much filling as I expected and I was left with an empty round pie shell. On Saturday I dealt with that by turning it into a Pear and Frangipane Tart. (Everyone said how lovely and moist the quiche was, and there wasn't a scrap left - I still haven't confessed!)

Which reminded me of this easy pear recipe which I used to cook as a dessert when I was catering for Wet, Wild and Windy Weekends in the Scripture Union centre around this time of the year.
Bake Pears in Caramel Syrup: for 6-8
Take 6-8 medium sized ripe pears, peel, cut in half and scoop out the cores. Roll gently around in a dish with 3 tblsp of lemon juice, to prevent discolouring.
Arrange the pears cut side down in a shallow dish just the right size to hold them. all. Drizzle any remaining lemon juice over, and then sprinkle with enough cinnamon and ginger to give a taste but not be too strong.
In a pan, heat 8 ounces / 1 cup sugar till it melts and goes pale golden brown. Pour it over the pears, making sure to keep your hands well above the dish, as the caramel will spit on contact with the pears and lemon juice.
Bake at 190C / Mark 5/ 375F for about half an hour, till pears are tender. Serve warm with some of the syrup from the pan, and vanilla icecream or thick whipped cream.
Now I want upside-down pear gingerbread - and with the weather having got as cold as it has, it's the time of year for it. I finished my sweater in perfect time.

I don't often post cards here, but I was so happy with how this one turned out, given that it was for a difficult situation - someone leaving work because of redundancy.

The crumble that nearly wasn't...

The railway line runs at the end of our garden - there's a bit of no-man's land between our wall and the railway, and the brambles grow over it. C was leaving cutting them back till after we'd harvested the blackberries, which we did on Monday - it was a lovely sunny evening. We had a friend for dinner on Tuesday, so the berries stayed sitting out in the cold porch. But that meant that I really had to use them on Wednesday...off down to the vegetable shop. I reached the little local shopping centre, and there was no electricity. Luckily the greengrocer was happy to estimate the weight of the apples and I had the right change; I am not sure that I would have thought it was worth driving all the way to the big shopping centre just to get apples, but the berries did need using. Luckily that catch-22 was avoided.
I'm always looking for a good crumble recipe - all suggestions welcome. Sometimes I use the one from the Penguin Cordon Bleu Puddings and Desserts. This time I used one from an old edition of The Joy of Cooking. In the book it's equal measures brown sugar, butter and flour, but my mother had doubled the amount of sugar when she wrote in imperial measurements, and I stuck with that. No matter what recipe I try, they rarely come out as I think they should, but this one was pretty good.

Salambos, profiteroles...and birds

We had a busy weekend - it was C's father's 90th birthday last week, and there was a family meal on Saturday. I was asked to make a dessert, so I thought I'd make profiteroles. And just for a change I made some of them as Salambos à l'Orange. It's the same choux pastry buns, but you used caramel to top them (being careful not to burn your fingers when you're dipping the buns into the hot caramel) and filled with an orange flavoured cream; the finely grated zest of one orange crushed with a couple of spoons of sugar and a bit of orange juice or an orange liqueur like Cointreau or Grand Marnier, folded into stiffly whipped cream. I had more orange cream than I needed, so some of the regular profiteroles had orange filling too - very nice with the chocolate sauce.
Our little robin is still hanging around. These photos were not even with the big zoom, I was able to get quite close. C was amazed one morning when he was out to see how close the little robin will come. Speaking of which, I'd better go and fill up the feeder, I didn't have time to do it this morning.