The Elegant Sufficiency

A Quince Tart

Can I direct your attention to page 613 (in the first edition) of Stephanie Alexander's The Cooks Companion ... for Stephanie's Quince Tart. A magnificent thing. From the pastry recipe to the poached quinces, I'm in love. Still carrying the wounds from peeling and coring those impenetrable, beastly fruit, but the rewards are there in spades. If I could add anything to her method, it would be not to overfill the pastry case with the filling, as any spillage will burn nastily. And, even if the filling feels a little wobbly at the 25-30 minute mark, take the tart out of the oven... it will continue to set as it cools.
Australians at least should find quinces here and there at the moment. Go forth and bake. Add ice-cream.

(Not much of a shot, I know... but there's not much natural light in my kitchen at 6 o'clock on an autumn day I'm afraid.)

Consider also:

• Martha Stewart's Quince Tarte Tatin
• Maggie Beer's Quince Tarts with Sour Cream Pastry
• Quince Jelly on Elise's Simply Recipes
• Eliza Acton's Quince Marmalade on BBC Food.

Cocktail Hours

With my very, very carefully planted geographical error in the previous post, I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. I’m really pleased to see that the Australians among you, including my dear father, are on the ball. Of course, Albury-Wodonga is not on the border of Victoria and Queensland. (For those further afield, it’s on the border of Victoria and New South Wales.)
Mmmm, well, seriously, I have no excuses for such a silly thing – wrote that when I was sober as a judge – but hope it gave you locals a good laugh at my expense!
Heaven knows what errors you might find in this missive: despite a desperate deadline for an article due first thing tomorrow morning, I’ve had an idle day out with a great old friend that drew to a lovely close an hour or so ago with a few glasses of West Australian riesling and a wicked, wicked pasta carbonara at Balzari. (Thank heavens the trainer with whom I have a date first thing tomorrow doesn’t read my blog.)
Really though, what else could we have done but have a nice glass or two of something after seeing the stylish, hilarious, champagne-sodden new Audrey Tautou film, Priceless (Hors de prix). It has been described as a contemporary doing-over of the Breakfast at Tiffany’s story, but its arch, mischievous character and its restrained sexiness (not to mention the lush, playground-of-the-rich-and-idle Riviera location) remind me more of something Carey Grant might have done, perhaps To Catch a Thief.

If I were a film reviewer (which perhaps you’ve quickly identified I’m not), I’d make it a priority to get my facts straight about the cocktail(s) that the initially hapless Jean (Gad Elmaleh) mixed for Irene (Tautou) on their first encounter. This is, after all, a film with an anti-heroine who decorates her messy chignon with those fabulous old paper cocktail umbrellas. This is important information. Yet, do you think Google has turned up one review for me that tells me what Jean mixed? It was pinkish, topped up with champagne, and he finished it with a starfruit slice+umbrella garnish, but damn, do you think I can find out what it was?
The best thing I’m going to be able to do for you is to share a little something I’ve long adored, something cheerful for a change, which is about as sexy and easy as Irene was in her divine little slip dresses and heels. The only difference? Irene was considerably more boozy than this little number.

Delia Smith's Strawberry Granita
(From Delia Smith's Summer Collection, BBC Books 1993)
Serves 8

1lb (450g) strawberries
6oz (175g) caster sugar
1 pint (570ml) water
3tbsp lemon juice

Hull strawberries, rinse in colander, drain well and dry on kitchen towel. Put strawberries in a food processor or blender and blend until it is a smooth puree. Stop the motor and add sugar. Blend briefly again. Add water and lemon juice and blend again, before pouring the mixture through a sieve into a bowl. Pour into a freezer container. Let the granita start to freeze around the edges for a couple of hours before pulling out and breaking the ice up with a fork. Return to the freezer. Repeat twice.

Aunt Mabel's Christmas Pudding: the Denouement

I’m getting weary. The post that was meant to be a reflection on Christmases past, on eccentric family food traditions and fiery family arguments; of lazy, boozy Christmas afternoons sitting on the deck looking at the ocean and talking rubbish … well, that post is fading before my very tired eyes. All that I have left in me tonight, before I start to pack the swimsuits and sarongs and sunscreen and piles of books for my two-week Christmas break in Queensland, is to offer this Christmas pudding recipe.
It doesn’t need suet, it doesn’t need brandy butter, it doesn’t need ceremony, it doesn’t need to be made three months ahead. It needs a week of alcohol-soaked fruit and the smallest amount of discipline first thing on Christmas Day before your first glass of wine.
The pudding is a member of the family now, a gorgeous, moist, fragrant thing. We know now that, every year, without fail, Dad will wail, as he attempts to upend the pudding from its basin, that it’s a dreadful failure. He’ll wink at me, and turn to Mum, and say in tragi-tones: “Oh, Robin, it’s a disaster.” And of course, the pudding with flop delightedly on to its serving plate, and the cream will come out and we’ll all hoe in and our stomachs will stretch out a bit further in a pregnant sort of fashion. And this year, when Dad winks at me, I’ll pray to someone, somewhere, that there are many more years of winks to come.

Aunt Mabel’s Christmas Pudding

1 pound (500g) dried mixed fruit
4oz (125g) halved cherries
4oz (125g) halved almonds
4oz (125g) dates, chopped (optional)
4oz (125g) figs, chopped (optional)
fresh nutmeg, grated
pinch of allspice
1tsp vanilla essence
1tsp lemon essence
1 cup rum
1 cup brandy
½ pound (250g) butter
½ pound (250g) brown sugar
pinch of salt
4 eggs
½ pound (250g) breadcrumbs (fresh, from crustless white bread)
2 big tablespoons plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate soda (dissolved in a little warm water)

NB: This recipe makes a big pudding. You’ll need a 4 litre custom-made pudding basin with lid, or a stainless steel bowl with a good rim and an aluminum foil “lid”; some big bowls; plus a large saucepan with lid that will fit the basin for steaming.
1. 5-7 days before Christmas (or longer): Marinate all the dried mixed fruit, cherries almonds, dates, figs, nutmeg, allspice and essences in the rum and brandy in a glass or ceramic dish that can be sealed. Every couple of days, stir so the fruit and nuts are thoroughly covered in alcohol.
2. Getting ready on Christmas morning: Butter the pudding basin really well and sift a little flour over the greased butter. Shake the flour around the basin to evenly coat the basin with four. Put your big saucepan on the stove about a quarter full of water. Start to heat the water. Take three sheets of aluminum foil, each a square wider than the diameter of the pudding bowl. Grease each side of the foil and stick them together. Set aside.
3. Action on Christmas morning: Cream the butter in a mixmaster until it is light and fluffy. Gradually add the brown sugar until the mixture is combined and fluffy. This could take up to 15 minutes. Add salt, then eggs, one at a time.
4. Remove the bowl from the mixmaster base. Add the alcohol-saturated fruit and nut mixture, folding gently into the butter-sugar mixture. Add breadcrumbs gradually, folding them through the mixture, then flour and bicarb soda dissolved in a little warm water.
5. Pour the mixture into the greased pudding basin, making sure there aren’t messy bits of mixture around the rim of the bowl. If you’re using a stainless-steel bowl, place the greased aluminum foil layers over the top of the bowl. Tie several lengths of string around the rim tightly, sealing the aluminum foil, then make “handles” with the string so you can lift the basin out of the boiling water. The pudding must be sealed.
6. Place the pudding in the saucepan of simmering water – the water should reach up to a third of the height of the basin. Steam the pudding in simmering water for 4-5 hours.
7. Remove the pudding from the simmering water. When the basin has slightly cooled, run a sharp thin knife around the edges of the pudding to loosen it from the bowl. Tip it upside down over a plate or serving platter and tap the basin to loosen the pudding. If you have greased it well, it should slip out on to your platter in a slinky fashion. Serve it with whatever you fancy: custard, cream, icecream, cocktails, champagne or tokay.

Aunt Mabel's Christmas Pudding, Cont.

Have been feverishly working to meet a deadline, but also thinking about Christmas. Stay tuned for Aunt Mabel's amazing Christmas Pudding Recipe, which can be made only a few days ahead of the big day.

Cherries for Aunt Mabel's Christmas Pudding

You have to wonder about glace cherries. I mean, what the hell are they? They bear absolutely no resemblance to fresh cherries. Were they ever fresh cherries? Since 1956, according to their packaging, Winn (a division of Australian Nut Processors) has been producing red glace cherries. But what the hell are glace cherries? How on earth are they made? The ingredients list tells us: “Pitted red glace cherries (95%), glucose syrup, sugar, preservatives (211), flavour, acids (296), colours (129, 122).” That suggests to me that, even at the outset of the manufacturing process, there weren’t any fresh cherries in the mix.
So how did glace cherries acquire such an exalted position. Why did Aunt Mabel – a mysterious, sepia-toned, elderly figure in my family’s past who may or may not have existed but who, very kindly, bequeathed to my grandmother, Alice, and thence to my mother, Robin, a very very marvellous Christmas pudding recipe in spidery handwriting – choose to use glace cherries, which clearly weren’t ever fresh cherries, in that famed Christmas pudding recipe?
And why, in Favourite Recipes of America – Salads, Including Appetizers (Favourite Recipes Press, 1968, Louisville Kentucky) – do glace cherries appear in a Cranberry-Pineapple Salad on page 49, an Angel Salad on page 50 (never mind “Barbara’s Salad” on page 50 which calls for “miniature marshmallows”), the Hawaiian Tuna Salad on page 192, and the Sweet Macaroni Salad on page 205 (courtesy of Mrs Maurice W. Dunn, Officers Wives’ Club, Fort Riley, Kan.).

Okay, I’m taking the piss just a bit here. I’m sure the mysterious Aunt Mabel, and Mrs Maurice W. Dunn of Fort Riley, Kansas, had the very best intentions. But 1968 is only 38 years ago. It’s extraordinary how far we’ve come, and yet how much we cling to the past. I wouldn’t dream of making any other Christmas pudding than Aunt Mabel’s. Her pudding, glace cherries and all, is as much a part of the family as my new niece, Marni, 10 months, who’s walking now and creating terror, and for whom I’m going to spend my Christmas digging sandcastles.

The Chocolate Cure

My father looks frail. Pale and thinner than I have ever seen him, the once shapely football player’s legs now undefined and shaky under him. He has finished his six weeks of radiotherapy; farewelled the clinic staff with a large box of chocolates. But exposure to the rays emitted from a machine Dad came to call the Pterodactyl, coupled with the effects of a drug regime, have ravaged his 70-year-old body. Until two months ago, he looked like a 50-year-old. Women watched after him admiringly as he strode off down the beach for his daily two-hour walks through the coastal national park near his home. He could, he told me proudly yesterday, climb the punishing 225 steps up to the park’s headland in four minutes, twenty seconds. We climbed them yesterday, he and I, very much more slowly. He took the lead, determined to reach the top; I followed, outrageously unfit, legs screaming, determined not to be left in his extraordinary wake. At the top, gasping for breath, a view of an unpolluted, deserted white beach that stretches for miles, and the finest sparkling Pacific Ocean with a limitless horizon. I just hope Dad saw it.
Amid his side effects—the tremors, the dizziness, the insomnia and depression and lack of concentration, the awful diarrhoea—there may be one small consolation. Dad, who has spent an abstemious lifetime watching his diet and his shifting waistline, for now can eat as much as he wants, of whatever he wants. Oh, did I mention that other side effect? Appetite loss. Still, he managed to devour two of these little tortes that I made during my visit home, which are the quickest, simplest little treasures to make.

They’re basically self-saucing puddings, given a bit of zing by a chilli (hot pepper) flavoured vincotto (boiled grape must) from the boutique Italian company Gianni Calogiuri. I halved the recipe below without any side effects; next time I’d be inclined to add a little more vincotto. And I’m sure the recipe would work just as beautifully without the vincotto.
If you want to make them ahead of serving, pour your mixture into the greased dishes, cover with cling film, and refrigerate until you need them. They should keep for at least a couple of days.

Warm Chocolate Torte with Vincotto al Peperoncino
(Tortino al cioccolato caldo con Vincotto al Peperoncino)

Serves 10

300g dark 35% chocolate
300g butter
150g plain flour (all-purpose flour)
150g caster sugar
8 eggs
25g Vincotto al Peperoncino*
Cream or crème Anglaise to serve

Preheat oven to 165°C. Lightly grease individual foil ramekin dishes** with butter.
Melt chocolate and butter in a double saucepan. Sift flour into a bowl and stir in sugar. Lightly whisk eggs and whisk into flour and sugar mixture.
Add the melted chocolate and the Vincotto to the bowl and use a large stainless steel spoon to fold the mixture together.
Pour into the ramekins, stopping when the mixture is about 2cm from the top to allow for rising, and bake for 10 minutes. After removing the tortes from the oven, allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes, then gently cut or tear away the casings. Serve with cream or crème Anglaise.

* The Gianni Calogiuri range is available at good foodstores; in Melbourne, at Enoteca Sileno, where I watched the Calogiuri chefs demonstrate the tortes and other vincotto recipes.

** I used disposable Novacart pastry dishes, which were terrific.

Quivering Flanks

‘At the end of the meal appeared a rum jelly. This was the Prince’s favourite pudding, and the Princess had been careful to order it early that morning in gratitude for favours granted. It was rather threatening at first sight, shaped like a tower with bastions and battlements and smooth slippery walls impossible to scale, garrisoned by red and green cherries and pistachio nuts; but into its transparent and quivering flanks a spoon plunged with astounding ease. By the time the amber-coloured fortress reached Francesco Paolo, the sixteen-year-old son who was served last, it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks of wobbly rubble. Exhilarated by the aroma of rum and the delicate flavour of the multi-coloured garrison, the Prince enjoyed watching the rapid demolishing of the fortress beneath the assault of his family’s appetite.’

From The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (first published as Il Gattopardo, 1958)

The Leopard, the wonderful novel (and later Visconti film) depicting a crumbling Sicilian society in the late 19^th century, is corpulent with evocative passages, at least a couple food-related. (Lampedusa’s description of the supper room at the Palazzo Ponteleone ball is even more captivating … but I’ll return to that another day.) The Prince’s rum jelly came to mind when I was studying my latest cookbook purchase – Cucina Siciliana: Authentic Recipes and Culinary Secrets from Sicily, by Clarissa Hyman (Conran Octopus, 2002). The cover features a luscious photo of oozing baked figs with pomegranate seeds and the photographs inside are just as luscious: burdened olive branches; vespas (suggesting dark, handsome young men?) parked next to a grocer’s laden wooden fruit and vegetable crates; wizened old men contemplating the sea; spiky sea urchins in a fish market (and I’ll most definitely return to the subject of sea urchins another day).

But back to the jelly theme: page 95 and there’s a recipe for lemon jelly.

I love a lemon. Give me lemon delicious, lemon meringue, lemon sorbet, lemon cake, lemon posset, lemonade … I’d sell my soul for a lemon. If I were to try and recreate the Prince’s rum jelly I would need more ambition and architectural nous that I have. But Hyman’s Gelo di Limone, which she suggests decorating ‘in true Sicilian style’ with hundreds and thousands, is eminently manageable for even a lazy home cook like me. (Can't stop humming the Italian crooner Paolo Conte's funky number, Gelato Al Limon to myself now.)

NB: My version was tasted by an expert who suggests using less gelatine than Hyman recommends below – perhaps take it back to 15g – and also that you use lemon peel rubbed with sugar (to bring out the lemon oils) rather than lemon zest. If you did that, you would strain the mixture before pouring it into your mould or glasses. I also found that the jelly takes an awfully long time to set – you should make it the day before you want to devour it.

Gelo di limone (Lemon Jelly)

20g leaf gelatine

750ml water

400g sugar

zest of two lemons

250ml fresh lemon juice

2-3tbsp limoncello

lemon slices and leaves or red berries to decorate

Soak the gelatine for 5 minutes in 2-3 tablespoons of the water.

Heat the remaining water and sugar gently until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat and add the soaked gelatine (squeeze out excess water), stirring until dissolved. The water should be very hot but not boiling.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon zest, juice and limoncello and pour into a wetted mould or – far safer – individual serving glasses that do not require you to turn the jelly out.

Leave to cool, then chill in the fridge for several hours.

Decorate with slices of lemon and leaves, or with some red berries. Serves 4