Look at these beautiful winter foods! We’ve had a lot of rain this winter and citrus fruit has been plentiful. I’ve made jams, lemon meringue pie, lemon drizzle cakes and all sorts of salads, sauces and marinades with limes, pink grapefruit and lemons. My husband says the mandarins are the best. I gave up on my mushroom farm and bought these luscious, big brown mushrooms. I am the only one who eats them….lucky me!
The last of the passion fruit. They were heavy and full of pulp and I was going to make passion fruit butter, but we just ate them instead.
Lovely lemons made a lovely lemon meringue pie.
Put leftover bread in the oven while the spinakopita, a fetta and spinach pie, cooked and then processed the toasted pieces to make breadcrumbs. I’ve made chicken, beef and turkey rissoles almost every week this winter and they all call for breadcrumbs.
Spinakopita. I used to make this years ago and made it again for a vegetarian friend and have kept making it. Really enjoying the contrast of flavours. Delicious hot or cold.
A busy day and sushi for dinner. We really enjoy sushi and there’s leftovers for lunch the next day. We always order from the same place.
Fresh mussels were $4 a kilo at The Boatshed so I cooked them in white wine until the shells popped open, then sprinkled them with parsley and poured them into bowls with crusty bread. So fresh and so tasty.
Made a big pot of soup using carrots, cauliflower, celery, a swede, a parsnip, an onion and some potato plus homemade stock. I fried the onions first in a splash of olive oil then added the other vegetables and the stock and let it boil until it was soft, then used a Bamix to puree it all. Forgot to take a photo as we were too busy eating it!
This Kleenmaid Brandt double oven is nearly twelve years old and has been used almost every day. It has been very good, until it wasn’t; the ON/OFF dial stopped working. The electrician came and the replacement part was going to take three months to arrive, cost a frightening amount of money and then needed to be installed. By the time he’d had shown me another problem he’d have to fix, I knew the answer was a new oven.
Set off intending to get another white oven but that wasn’t possible. Oven shopping isn’t fun and when we found a stainless steel double oven with the qualities we wanted we bought it.
Old oven out, new oven in. So glad the cavity was a standard size and the new oven slipped in and was screwed into place. Then we had to run it for 30 minutes. It smelt awful but has been fine ever since. I baked a loaf of sourdough the next morning. The new oven has the ability to be set at 40 degrees to prove bread dough, one of 50 cooking programs and is pyrolytic, or self cleaning. Steep learning curve!
Recently we visited a cousin’s farm and lunch ended with cheese, crackers and quince paste. Delicious. I had three quinces so made some paste myself. Quinces are unfashionable and hard to get and not very attractive. They cannot be eaten raw and need to be cooked for a long time with sugar. They go from white fresh to a gorgeous pink when they’re boiled or baked and taste great.
To make QUINCE PASTE, peel, core and cut up 2 kilos of quince. Bring to the boil with half a cup of water (125ml) in a heavy based pan, reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. It should now be a thick pulp.
Puree in a blender or with a stick blender then weigh the puree and add 250gm sugar for every 500gm of puree. ( I reduced the sugar by 50gm and it is still very sweet ) Return to saucepan, simmer for 45 minutes uncovered, stirring regularly then pour the mixture into a baking dish, about 2.5 cm deep, lined with parchment paper and allow to cool.
The paste was still runny, so I put it in a moderate oven for 35 minutes, then allowed it to cool and it was glossy and firm. I cut it into rectangles and wrapped it in parchment paper.
The paste needed to be stirred regularly while it simmered for 45 minutes so I made crepes, too, using batter made of the “discard” from the sourdough mother/starter I use for sourdough bread, with an egg and almond milk added. So, pour crepe batter into pan and swirl to spread, stir paste, walk from one end of the house to the other ( 75 steps) flip the crepe, stir the paste and walk. Repeat until all the batter was cooked and the paste was ready to pour into a dish.
Quince paste, or Dulce de Membrillo in Spanish, is a delicacy eaten with cheese and crackers.
Served the crepes with strawberries seeped in kirsch and icing sugar, plus lemons and sugar. Very nice weekend lunch.
PLUTO. On the 24th of August, 2009, following intense debate, astronomers decided to demote Pluto from being a planet, so, officially, there are now eight planets in the solar system. Pluto is now a dwarf planet.