montjoye

For Myra, and anyone else interested including future me.

I used this recipe below for the meringue part. I made two rectangles on each of two baking trays. Do use baking paper, I have reusable stuff. Because my shapes were probably thinner than the recipe, i cut the baking time to 1hr. When fully cooled, these will keep for weeks if airtight. I used a big ziplock bag

www.chelsea.co.nz/browse-recipes/almond-meringue-torte-dacqoise/

This recipe for the raspberry curd. It uses all the yolks left over from the meringue. I used a tip from a different recipe- cooked the rasps with a little of the sugar and pushed through a sieve before proceeding. Mine didn't set properly though and I used some gelatin the next day to make it a little thicker. Or you could try a recipe that has a little cornflour in.

www.allrecipes.com/recipe/270526/raspberry-curd/


To assemble:
The first three layers are spread with curd, then whipped cream and placed in a stack. The final layer has a layer of whipped cream but no curd and dutch cocoa sieved over the top. It is best assembled in advance or the merinque is too crispy to serve. 8hrs to a day in advance I'd say. Then a punnet of fresh raspberries are arranged over the top.

Seven chutney/relish/ketchup recipes that have no alliums. I've made all of them, mostly several times. All need a few months in the bottle to mature before using. If a fancy sugar like muscovado is listed, you can subtitute plain brown sugar. Vinegars, malt/wine/cider can be used. The end result might be a little different. I'm often just using whatever I have in the cupboard. The chutneys keep really well. The ketchups and kasundi are better bottled in small jars and kept in the fridge once opened.

For the evil baron to share with his chemist friends, also for anyone else who needs or wants such things. Most of my versions started with bulk home grown fruit, sometimes frozen first. It's not stone fruit season now. I wonder if the two apricot ones would work with apple or pear substituted for the apricots? I reckon they might, and those are in season now, though maybe a bit more sugar to deal with the acidity difference if using apples.


Apricot Rhubarb Chutney
my adaptation of an adapted version of a Sally Wise recipe

1.2 kg (3lb) apricots*, stones removed, then chopped
~700g Rhubarb, finely chopped
500ml (2 cups) malt vinegar
1 cup of dark brown sugar
2 tablespoon ginger, finely grated
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon allspice
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
½ teaspoon cloves (lifted out towards the end of cooking)
½ teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
2 teaspoon mustard seeds- partially ground in the mortar
½ tsp cardamom seeds- partially ground in the mortar

Combine rest ingredients and boil 1 hour. Bottle and seal. Makes 4-5 medium sized jars.
* Peaches, nectarines and rhubarb can be used in place of apricots. The rhubarb chutney needs to sit for 2 months before using.

Apricot Orange Chutney:
Based on my favourite Apricot Rhubarb chutney but twisted towards orange, inspired by recipes on the net (by Delia and Antony Worrall Thompson)

2 kg apricots, stones removed, halved
zest and chopped flesh of one orange
1/2c sultanas
500ml (2 cups) cider vinegar
1 c (210g) light muscavado sugar
1 tablespoon ginger, finely grated (well out of a jar)
1 teaspoon salt
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
½ t cloves (lifted out towards the end of cooking)
1/4 t nutmeg, freshly grated
1t tumeric
1 teaspoon coriander seed}
2 t mustard seeds}
½ t cardamom seeds}- dry fried, then partially ground in the mortar
plus the cassia sticks from the sauce below

Heat slowly until sugar dissolved, then boil gently until thickened. Remove cloves and cassia towards end of cooking. Bottle.


Peach Chilli Chutney- this one is good with curry
based on: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3158677/peach-and-chilli-chutney

2 sticks celery finely chopped
1.2kg peach flesh, chopped
two handfuls sultanas
6 thumb-sized red chillies, finely chopped (3/4 of the remaining teeny chillis)
heaped dessert spoon minced ginger
1 tbsp cumin seed
seeds from 15 cardamom pods
200g soft light brown sugar
250ml cider vinegar
3 big shakes hing powder (asafoetida)

Fry the celery in a little oil until soft, it's pretending to be onion. Add everything else. Gently heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the peaches have softened – this will take about 45 mins. Bottle to sterilised jars.

2025
used yellow nectarines, 2 red cayenne chillies including seeds, 1t cardamon seeds, sherry vinegar.

Plum Chutney- very good with cheese
by Chef Floyd Cardoz of Tabla in New York

1kg plums, red, black, green, or blue plums (tart or sweet; about 5 large),quartered, pitted
1 whole star anise*
1 whole clove
1 2-inch piece cinnamon stick
1/2 cup red wine vinegar (I used half cider vinegar- what I had)
1/2 cup sugar (I doubled this, didn't sound like enough to preserve?)
1 2-inch piece peeled fresh ginger, cut into 1/2-inch-thick rounds (I used chopped.
1 tablespoon whole mustard seeds
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

*Finely grind star anise, clove, and cinnamon stick in spice mill or coffee grinder.

-Combine spice mixture, vinegar, sugar, ginger, mustard seeds, and pepper in heavy large saucepan. Stir over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves and bring to boil. Add plums; reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until chutney thickens and chunky sauce forms, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes. Cool. Season to taste with salt.


Spiced Plum Sauce
like a ketchup but with plums

• 1.5kg plums
• 1 1/2 tsp whole cloves
• 1 tsp whole allspice
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 2 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
• 3 cups vinegar (white/red wine or cider vinegar)
• 1 hot chilli, seeded and chopped (optional)

Bring all to boil until plums collapse.
Pass through mouli or sieve to remove stones and spices.
Boil uncovered until it thickens. Note it thickens further on cooling. (aiming for a bit thicker than tomato sauce).
Bottle
Wait at least a month before using.

This is a St Stephanie (Stephanie Alexander) recipe. I've altered the method because these plums are not easily stoned.

Alternative method for ease:
destone plums
use approx equivalent ground spices
after cooking until plums collapse, whizz with a stab blender to puree
then continue cooking to thicken.

If your plums are very sour, use extra sugar.


Tomato Sauce/Ketchup

1 jar tomato passata (~700ml)
2/3 cup vinegar (I used cider vinegar from Weaver)
slosh water
generous half cup of brown sugar
3/4t salt
1/2t mustard powder
1/2t freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves
2 allspice berry

Passata to saucepan. Rinse with vinegar. Rinse again with small amount water. All into saucepan.
Add all other ingredients
bring gently to boil. Stir lots or it will spit.
Simmer further until the consistency looks like tomato sauce.
Remove whole spices
Bottle in sterilised vessel.


Oh and Tomato Kasundi is amazing.  A spoonful on top of a fried egg is very yum. I've made this recipe twice, substituting 3 big shakes of hing powder for the garlic. witcheskitchen.com.au/kasundi/. It works perfectly well with tamarillos instead of tomatos, just has a slightly different texture.

I went mad and bought a whole beef rump- from which these bits were extracted

Jerky
this recipe from L. Also recommended is:www.markblumberg.com/biltong.html

1.1kg strips of lean rump
4 tsp sugar (I used dark brown for max flavour)
2 tbs coriander crushed
2 tbs coarse salt
1 tsp cracked pepper (pepper takes more grinding than coriander- do separately next time)
1/2 cup malt vinegar ( I used red wine vinegar 'cause I had it)

marinate overnight, dehydrate.

Bresaola
two ~500g logs of rump this year*

Cure:
100g salt
100g white sugar
5g peppercorns}
3ish g fresh rosemary leaves}
3g juniper berries} ground in coffee grinder with a little of the salt

Reserve half the mix
Rub other half into meat
Seal in zip lock bag- fridge for a week, turn daily
Dry off meat, rub in other half of cure, repeat the week of fridge+turning.
Quick water rinse, pat dry with cloth or paper towel. Vinegar rinse (I put vinegar in a small bowl and use a cloth to pat it on the meat), dry off again, weigh and record.
Tie, wrap and hang as per link until 30% weight lost. (I invert it every few days in the first week. If the cloth gets wet, change it). The drying takes about 3weeks, at least here with usually no higher than medium humidity.
Slice thinly and eat- with olive oil and lemon juice is recommended.

Note: we established last year that a version without nitrates/pink salt/prague powder... not only works fine, we preferred it.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2011/may/13/how-make-bresaola-in-pictures#/

Out of the cure 25th March
One piece 400g, t'other 550g

* beef cuts I have used: eye fillet (marvellous but exxy) girello (acceptable- has been used the last two years), this year I'm trying rump. The recipe I was working from and linked to, specifies something like "top round" which is an american thing and different to what we can get in Oz due to different methods of hanging a beef carcass I'm told. You want something very lean and a neat log along the grain of the meat, not too tough. Pork loin also works. 2025: and now I can add silverside to this list, obviously not the corned sort.

Windfall quinces from 10B.
Washed, halved and icky bits cut off... gave 1.5kg fruit. (last time I peeled, cored and cubed the fruit, then froze and defrosted)
Added the last of a pot of honey - near 200g. (last year was half white sugar, half honey)
All in the slow cooker. Cover well with water.
Cook ~12hrs
add pectinase (for better juice extraction and reduced haze in the finished product, can just omit if preferred)
and campden tablet (to kill any wild yeasts/bacteria). leave 24hrs, heating a little occasionally. Targetting 25-30C.
Boil straining bag to sterilise. Strain and squeeze into fermenter- gives ~2L pretty pink/red liquid. Add 8L bought apple juice (no preservative. Both Aldi and Coles cheap stuff is fine). Rehydrate and pitch Safcider yeast.

11th May. Airlock has been quiet for several days  density 1.005. Bottle.

Chicken Liver and Bacon Paté

The one Mama always made and now I do too. Sans alliums and it's still really tasty. Feel free to make it, but if for a thing that I will be at, please check with me first.

500g chicken livers, rinsed, drained, white bits and especially any green bits removed (kitchen scissors are useful here)
2T brandy
1T butter
4 rashers bacon, chopped and rind removed
thyme. several branches fresh or about 1/2t dried
2 bay leaves
2T butter
1/4c cream
2T sherry (dry or medium preferred)
1/2t salt
black pepper fresh ground
~5T butter, melted, for sealing.

-Roughly chop(kitchen scissors again for ease) and marinate prepared livers in brandy for half an hour
-Melt 1T butter, gently fry bacon and herbs (no browning). Remove from pan
-Melt 2T butter. Add livers and juice, cook over medium heat, turning livers until just coloured.
-Return bacon and herb mix to pan. Cook over med heat for a further 5 min. Remove bay leaves and thyme branches if using.
-Puree with stab mixer or blender
-Mix in cream, sherry, S+P
-Transfer to bowl/s, leaving room for the sealing butter
-Pour melted butter to cover the tops, leaving milk solids behind.
-Refrigerate.
Best made a day before serving. Will keep about a week in the fridge. Can be frozen, but texture changes.

Finding somewhere that sells the livers can be a bit challenging. I've only found one place near me. You want nice shiny plump ones without nasty discolouration.

A few of my longer term readers have gone all nostalgic when I post the odd shoe picture. So golly gee, why not restart the shoe files?

Today I went out for lunch, popped in to Clearit to check out their fabric and came out with shoes. Blue brogues! Leather outside and in, fit well except the usual business of not really being meant for arches like mine. Good across the ball of the foot which is my other usual challenge point. Half price then 20% off. Thank you very much.




Yes my trousers are too short, I'm also bending over to take these pics so they look even shorter.

1 point something kilo of pork shoulder roast. Allow to come to room temp for an hour or so before putting in the oven. Score the skin deeply and rub in half a teaspoon of salt.

par grind 1 teaspoon each of fennel and caraway seeds.
mix with half a teaspoon of salt, the finely grated rind of a lemon and enough lemon juice to form a paste.
Spread this paste over the non skin parts of the meat. (can do this the day before, but just before the oven is fine)

Place meat, skin side up, in a covered casserole dish*. Add 1 cup of white wine (or cider, water, stock). Bake at 160C for 3hrs. Remove lid, turn heat up to 180C. Bake for a further 1hr. Keep an eye on it so the liquid reduces but doesn't dry out completely. Meat should be falling apart, you will have cracking if you are lucky and good gravy under the fat of the liquid.

(was served with jacket potatoes, roast pumpkin cubes and pan fried green beans)

*can use foil over a regular roasting pan. I used an enamelled cast iron pot because I've got one.


I've a version of this in the oven now (early Aug) with lemon rind/thyme/lemon thyme/salt as the rub. Larger piece of meat. I think the one about was about 1.2kg. This is 1.6kg. Heat the pot with a little oil in but no pre browning as such. Just put the meat in the hot oil, add wine, then into a 160C oven at 2:30pm. (preheating to reduce oven cooking time but I still added about 30min to the method above).



 

How many times will I rework these cherries? This has all been sort of fun, but frustrating too. I'm much happier when my cooking actually works. If I ever end up with cherries to cook again, I might make a cordial perhaps, or a chutney with proper proportions. If there is any attempt at jam, there will be apples involved to try to get a set.


Half a box of cherries came home with me from mrsbrown. I pitted them and tried to make marmalad with 1:1 fruit to sugar weight. That didn't seem to be working, so I bottled it, thinking I'd made jam instead. Checking it after it had cooled and sort of set, the consistency was odd. Very thick, ultra sticky. Sort of half way to toffee. Way too stiff to spread on bread or cake, but it would still flow, very slowly. So I let it sit for several months in the jars while I dealt with festival and a bunch of other things.



Then a few days ago, those jars were getting in my way. So I drained them over several days into a pot, but the simple method of upending them over a rack. One still needed persuading.




I heated this mix gently until it was fairly runny and blitzed it with the stab blender to break up the cherries. In the first round, I had just pitted the cherries, not chopped or mashed them. Then I brought it to a boil and took it up to 116C (should make fruit jelly). I poured it into a pan lined with baking paper and set it aside. The last bit that needed scraping out of the pan had obviously received more heat and gone closer to toffee, so I put that out separately.



After this was fully cold, it was fairly clear that the more cooked bit had set, but the jelly hadn't. I couldn't face trying again for jelly. I've had a couple of failed attempts in the past too. Maybe it's just not my dish.



So I managed to cut up the toffee into serving pieces (by golly it's tasty) and put them into some little chocolate papers I've had for ages*. I also wrestled some of the not-jelly into papers, stopped when I'd filled the only decent storage box I have for such things. Besides, I was loosing the will at that point.

This pic is after the jelly had time to flow slowly to levelish. The toffies are the ones still holding some sort of shape.

.

Then... I got the rest of the jelly off the paper and into a pan. Not easy! I proceeded as follows below.

~525ml failed cherry jelly
1c cider vinegar
1/2 c water
~1t ground spices
allspice, cinnamon, ginger, mustard, clove (in decreasing amounts

heat gently to combine
boil ~7min
bottle.

This has way too much sugar for normal chutney but should hopefully give a manageable consistency. If I like it, reproducing it won't be straightforward. Prior to boiling, the syrup tasted like liquid sour lollies, in a good way. I have hopes that after some maturing time, it might do well in a bacon sandwich, like the syrup from quatrefoil's fickled pigs.



*(from reverse garbage I think, perfectly clean and unused though)

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Mushroom rice as made on the last night of festival. It worked even better than I hoped. Tasty. Of course it can be scaled down for a smaller version. One can also substitute like crazy. The important thing is the rice to liquid ratio. It's gluten free. Leaving out the cheese and substituting olive oil for butter would make it dairy free too and still yummy.

~30g dried porcini mushrooms (the magic ingredient for this)
5-6 large field mushrooms roughly diced
2T butter
1c white wine
5c basmati rice
7.5c water, including porcini stock
2 chicken stock cubes (replacing the non porcini water with real stock would be better, but these keep for last night of festival)
a goodly handful of thyme leaves
~1t freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste
~200g hard cheese, grated or fairly finely chopped.

Soak porcini in enough hot water to cover for half an hour or so. Fish them out and chop them up. Save the soaking water!

Melt butter in a large pan (one of our tinys)
Saute all mushrooms until mostly cooked.
Add wine, then rice and spices, stir to coat the rice.
Add the porcini stock/water. Stir. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer (lid on) for 15min. Stir and check that the rice is cooked. If not, leave a bit longer, adding a little hot water if it seems to need it, we are aiming for quite a dry finish though. Check if more salt is needed. Stir in cheese.

An alternative red meat sauce, or my answer to the price of zucchinis in winter :-).

Goulashish

1kg beef/pork mince browned in olive oil
3 small/med carrots grated
1 200g turnip grated
6 leaves savoy cabbage shredded
two parsley blocks
4T sweet paprika
2t smoked paprika
1cup tomato paste
330ml ale/beer
1/2t salt
1t fresh ground black pepper
water to not quite cover.

Bring all to boil, then down to a slow simmer for a few (I aim for 3) hours. Cook uncovered for the last hour if needed to reduce the liquid. Adjust seasoning to taste

It's great served with sour cream and cheese over rice, pasta, or potatoes. Or eaten as a dip dinner with corn chips. Or one can have two lots of cabbage and serve it with coleslaw. Or... whatever you like really.