Yum yum yum... I daresay that this curd is better than the original lemon curd. Full of yellow passionfruit goodness!
Showing posts with label Preserves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Preserves. Show all posts
Monday, May 22, 2006
Breakfast for a Sunny Day
As you know, I made passionfruit curd yesterday. And this morning, Mum surprised me by buying a couple of lattés, some croissants and a brioche to have with it for breakfast!
Yum yum yum... I daresay that this curd is better than the original lemon curd. Full of yellow passionfruit goodness!
Yum yum yum... I daresay that this curd is better than the original lemon curd. Full of yellow passionfruit goodness!
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Ah the randonimity!
It's crunch time.
10 days to go.
Time for me to do all the random recipes. Ones that I have no idea when I'm going to eat, but just need to be made. I had a free afternoon and an empty house. Time to cook!
366. Passionfruit Curd (Basics etc.)
This is just like the lemon curd, but with passionfruit pulp in place of the lemon juice (unsurprisingly). So you stir eggs and egg yolks, sugar and butter with strained passionfruit pulp over a slow heat until thick and curd-like. At the end, you add one extra passionfruit (including seeds). I used one 170g tin of passionfruit pulp (don't hate me! Passionfruits are ridiculously expensive now... with fresh passionfruit, it would work out at more than $8 for one quantity of curd!)
Anyway, I made it, no hassles... and here's what it looks like.
passionfruit curd
Gorgeous! I tried some on toasted Turkish bread, which was delicious. I'm not sure what to do with the rest, but I suspect that we will get through it very quickly, just eating it for breakfast on toast.
passionfruit curd on toast
Next I thought I'd make egg mayonnaise.
367. Egg mayonnaise (Basics etc.)
10 days to go.
Time for me to do all the random recipes. Ones that I have no idea when I'm going to eat, but just need to be made. I had a free afternoon and an empty house. Time to cook!
366. Passionfruit Curd (Basics etc.)
This is just like the lemon curd, but with passionfruit pulp in place of the lemon juice (unsurprisingly). So you stir eggs and egg yolks, sugar and butter with strained passionfruit pulp over a slow heat until thick and curd-like. At the end, you add one extra passionfruit (including seeds). I used one 170g tin of passionfruit pulp (don't hate me! Passionfruits are ridiculously expensive now... with fresh passionfruit, it would work out at more than $8 for one quantity of curd!)
Anyway, I made it, no hassles... and here's what it looks like.
passionfruit curd
Gorgeous! I tried some on toasted Turkish bread, which was delicious. I'm not sure what to do with the rest, but I suspect that we will get through it very quickly, just eating it for breakfast on toast.
passionfruit curd on toast
Next I thought I'd make egg mayonnaise.
367. Egg mayonnaise (Basics etc.)
Egg mayonnaise is described very simply by Nigella, as "hard-boiled eggs, sliced and masked with light mayonnaise, with or withot a criss-crossing of anchovies on top". Easy!
So I boiled an egg, and pulled out my favourite kitchen gadget - the egg slicer! This one has lived in the 2nd drawer of the kitchen since before I was born, and I've always had a fixation with it. It's just so cool!
egg and slicer
egg in slicer
egg in slicer 3
Hmm... but for some reason, it didn't cut the egg cleanly! Perhaps I was too impatient, slicing the egg while it was still warm. Or maybe it's cos my egg slicer is older than I am.
squished!
sorta sliced
So I salvaged the egg pieces, and arranged them as best I could on a plate, spooned a bit of mayo (from a jar) on top, followed by some anchovies. How I love dem anchovies.
egg mayonnaise
It looks gross on the plate, but it tastes so good!! Eggs need salt, anchovies are salty! And mayo's just good, full stop. It's a no brainer. Mum and I ate this as a mid-afternoon snack.
Now I gotta cook dinner... more recipes coming...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Mostarda di Venezia
343. Mostarda di Venezia (Basics etc.)
Now, this recipe is definitely one of those that has been freaking me out for the past 10 months. Even after reading the recipe innumerable times, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be. A jam? A chutney? Some sort of preserve? Well, either way, it’s a way of using quinces, and I finally got around to making it last Thursday.
These are the quinces. I got them at Leo's, naturally.
quinces
You start with 1.8 kilos of quinces, then peel, cut and core them, and cook them with a bottle of white wine, some lemon rind and lemon juice until soft and pulpy.
puréed quinces
At this point, Nigella says to push the mush through a food mill, but they were so soft that a good beating with a wooden spoon was enough to purée them sufficiently. Then you weigh the pulp, and add to it the same weight of sugar, before returning it to the pan and adding candied peel and mustard powder.
glacé orange - I found this at Leo's, the good stuff, "whole, in large jars"
So this mixture goes back on the heat until denser and deeper coloured, "about 20-30 minutes". My mostarda was only on the heat for about 10 minutes when it started to burn and catch, so I immediately took it off and let it cool. It looked deeper coloured and denser, so I felt that it was cooked enough.
cooked
And the next day, I put them in dishwasher-washed jars. Now I've got to leave it for a month before I get to eat it. Nigella has some serving suggestions for it, so I'll see y'all back here in a month's time.
jarred
Now, this recipe is definitely one of those that has been freaking me out for the past 10 months. Even after reading the recipe innumerable times, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be. A jam? A chutney? Some sort of preserve? Well, either way, it’s a way of using quinces, and I finally got around to making it last Thursday.
These are the quinces. I got them at Leo's, naturally.
quinces
You start with 1.8 kilos of quinces, then peel, cut and core them, and cook them with a bottle of white wine, some lemon rind and lemon juice until soft and pulpy.
puréed quinces
At this point, Nigella says to push the mush through a food mill, but they were so soft that a good beating with a wooden spoon was enough to purée them sufficiently. Then you weigh the pulp, and add to it the same weight of sugar, before returning it to the pan and adding candied peel and mustard powder.
glacé orange - I found this at Leo's, the good stuff, "whole, in large jars"
So this mixture goes back on the heat until denser and deeper coloured, "about 20-30 minutes". My mostarda was only on the heat for about 10 minutes when it started to burn and catch, so I immediately took it off and let it cool. It looked deeper coloured and denser, so I felt that it was cooked enough.
cooked
And the next day, I put them in dishwasher-washed jars. Now I've got to leave it for a month before I get to eat it. Nigella has some serving suggestions for it, so I'll see y'all back here in a month's time.
jarred
Monday, July 25, 2005
Bring on Lady Marmalade…
In my attempt to get through all of Nigella’s Seville Orange recipes during their short season, I made Seville Orange Marmalade last week on Monday. And it was only today, a full week later, that I managed to eat it for breakfast.
My breakfast... a cappucino, a glass of soymilk, toast with vegemite, and toast with cream cheese and Seville orange marmalade.
65. Seville Orange Marmalade
Nigella prefaces this recipe with the admission that she has never made marmalade, but she has a friend who “swears it’s easy”. Not exactly confidence-inspiring, but I was prepared to give it a go.
The recipe says to boil 700g Seville oranges, in 2 litres of water until soft. Ok, so I poured the water over the oranges, let it boil, and went to watch an episode of Arrested Development. And then I came back…
Whoops...
It had boiled dry and had started to catch on the bottom of the pan. Whoops. Still unpeturbed, I ran to my How to be a Domestic Goddess for advice. (In the few years between How to Eat and How to be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella seems to have increased her jam-making abilities extensively). And in that book, it just said to cover the oranges with enough water to let them float freely, rather than specifying an amount of water. So, I fired up the kettle and covered them generously with the boiled water. Then I let them boil until soft.
Still ok on the inside
Then you cut them up, remove the pips, boil them in some water, and chuck both oranges and pip-water in a pan with 1.4 kilos of sugar. Now, according to How to be a Domestic Goddess, you boil them until a drop of the marmalade placed on a cold saucer wrinkles when prodded. This should take about 15 minutes. I tested at 10 minutes, at 15, at 17, at 18… and never quite reached this mysterious setting stage. But by 20 minutes, the sludge in the pot was looking quite dark, so I gave up on the idea of discovering a setting point, and turned off the pan and let it cool, before spooning it into jars.
Pretty, huh?
This was all well and good until a couple of days later, when my mum tried to eat some for breakfast. The marmalade was rock solid!! SHIT.
I was all prepared for the marmalade to go the way of the rubbish bin and for me to start again, but my mum (now known as “Lady Marmalade”) wasn’t so easily put off. Unbeknownst to me, over the past couple of days, she was working on this marmalade. Firstly, she put the jars in a tray, and poured hot water up the sides to soften the jam. Eventually, it got soft enough for her to scrape out and into another pan. Then she added water, and put it on a gentle heat until it was all combined and fabulous.
Fixed!
GO MUM!
P.S. The marmalade tastes great! The perfect balance between bitter and sweet. I think I cut the oranges up too thickly though – my mum said they should have been cut finer. But the most important thing about this is to just boil it for 15 minutes, like the recipe says, so you don’t get a big solid pile of crap like I did!
My breakfast... a cappucino, a glass of soymilk, toast with vegemite, and toast with cream cheese and Seville orange marmalade.
65. Seville Orange Marmalade
Nigella prefaces this recipe with the admission that she has never made marmalade, but she has a friend who “swears it’s easy”. Not exactly confidence-inspiring, but I was prepared to give it a go.
The recipe says to boil 700g Seville oranges, in 2 litres of water until soft. Ok, so I poured the water over the oranges, let it boil, and went to watch an episode of Arrested Development. And then I came back…
Whoops...
It had boiled dry and had started to catch on the bottom of the pan. Whoops. Still unpeturbed, I ran to my How to be a Domestic Goddess for advice. (In the few years between How to Eat and How to be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella seems to have increased her jam-making abilities extensively). And in that book, it just said to cover the oranges with enough water to let them float freely, rather than specifying an amount of water. So, I fired up the kettle and covered them generously with the boiled water. Then I let them boil until soft.
Still ok on the inside
Then you cut them up, remove the pips, boil them in some water, and chuck both oranges and pip-water in a pan with 1.4 kilos of sugar. Now, according to How to be a Domestic Goddess, you boil them until a drop of the marmalade placed on a cold saucer wrinkles when prodded. This should take about 15 minutes. I tested at 10 minutes, at 15, at 17, at 18… and never quite reached this mysterious setting stage. But by 20 minutes, the sludge in the pot was looking quite dark, so I gave up on the idea of discovering a setting point, and turned off the pan and let it cool, before spooning it into jars.
Pretty, huh?
This was all well and good until a couple of days later, when my mum tried to eat some for breakfast. The marmalade was rock solid!! SHIT.
I was all prepared for the marmalade to go the way of the rubbish bin and for me to start again, but my mum (now known as “Lady Marmalade”) wasn’t so easily put off. Unbeknownst to me, over the past couple of days, she was working on this marmalade. Firstly, she put the jars in a tray, and poured hot water up the sides to soften the jam. Eventually, it got soft enough for her to scrape out and into another pan. Then she added water, and put it on a gentle heat until it was all combined and fabulous.
Fixed!
GO MUM!
P.S. The marmalade tastes great! The perfect balance between bitter and sweet. I think I cut the oranges up too thickly though – my mum said they should have been cut finer. But the most important thing about this is to just boil it for 15 minutes, like the recipe says, so you don’t get a big solid pile of crap like I did!
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