Some highlights from Palmerston North

Apart from the motorbike races, there was the guy …

… who sells freshly roasted …

… chestnuts at a street stall in George st:

On Sunday mornings he's at the Farmers' Market just around the corner in Coleman Place, where there is also a gorgeous French patisserie/chocolaterie where you can get a set menu petit déjeuner of half a baguette with butter and jam, a croissant, a pain au chocolat, a freshly squeezed orange juice, and a coffee of your choice for $14. Magic on a hangover.

Back at the farm where I was staying, this peacock spent most of his time tromping over the roof of the house …

… he sounded as though he was wearing hobnailed boots.

Various other birds and animals seem to get on well together …

… the cat is called Manx. He isn't one, but he was born minus a tail.

Here is Goosey:

And this is the typical storybook chook family:

There are also quails, lovebirds, parakeets, a sulphur-crested cockatoo, a gorgeous budgie that kept biting me, dogs, more cats, and miscellaneous other livestock, all of which are pets. When I used to live there 30-odd years ago we had two cats, a dog, and a cockatoo and that was it. Apart from the farm livestock that is - a pig, some horses and a few sheep.

Autumn fruits

My sister-in-law was in town the other day. Her grandfather died and she made a flying trip down for the funeral. She brought me down some fruit from her garden:

Those are, from left to right, figs, feijoas (she brought more than this but I gave some away to a friend who adores them), and passionfruit. She and my brother live in Auckland, which is sub-tropical, whereas I live in Dunedin which, although officially temperate, is more like sub-arctic a lot of the time, so it's quite a treat to get fresh fruit like this that I can't grow.

Of course I couldn't eat it all at once, some preserving needed to be done.

I halved all of the passionfruit, …

… scooped out the pulp into ice cube (except they're not cubes) trays …

… and froze it. When it was all frozen solid I popped it out of the trays …

… and put the lumps into a freezer box for easy access:

Now when I want a passionfruit I can just defrost a lump or two of pulp.

The figs were next. I decided on fig jam.

I had 750 g of figs and my jam book told me to cover them with boiling water for 3 minutes, …

… then drain them and squeeze out the excess water. There wasn't any excess water to I went on to the next step …

Which was cut them up or crush them, and cook in a tablespoon of lemon juice, adding a little water if necessary to stop them sticking:

Once they were tender (not sure about this, they seemed pretty tender to me from the beginning, I waited until they were cooked to mush) I was to add a cup of sugar and boil quickly until the setting point was reached. Setting point was pretty much immediately - I think these figs might have been a bit juice deficient.

Anyway, I poured the jam into hot sterilised (sort of, straight out of the hot dishwasher) jars and screwed on the lids:

Now I need to get my act together and make some labels.

And look what was in my very own garden:

There are heaps more on the vine too. They are very small grapes, but very tasty. I only get grapes every three years or so; grapes are not supposed to be able to grow outside here really at all. Most people have their grapevines in a glasshouse.

Paris-Brest a la Joe Pastry

This post from Joe Pastry filled me with the desire to emulate, I had to wait for an occasion when I needed to feed other people though. Alex from bridge had another pot-luck a couple of weeks ago and that was my big chance.

I just used almonds for the praline, not having any hazelnuts at hand, …

… cooked up the sugar and water …

… until it was a lightish caramel (I'm chicken) …

… and poured it over the nuts:

When it was cold I broke it up …

… and put it in the food processor and whizzed and whizzed and took the top off and scraped down the sides and whizzed some more, and all I got was crumbs, until I had the bright idea to add just a smidgeon of cooking oil. Finally I got a paste, although it is a lot thicker than Joe Pastry's:

On to the choux. All went swimmingly. The butter - milk - flour mix first …

…then the eggs, …

… one by one, …

… until they were all incorporated:

My piping bag is a bit small for this sort of thing, so I put the choux in a plastic bag, then chopped of one corner …

… and used that to pipe one large Paris - Brest …

… and two smaller ones, then I squeezed out the last dollop of choux to make a single profiterole:

Here they are in the oven, puffing up beautifully:

On to the pastry cream. Cream and milk on to heat …

… cornflour, sugar, …

… and egg yolks beaten together …

… hot milk/cream onto flour/sugar/egg yolks, cooked until thick, …

… then cooled down. Once cold, the praline cream mixed in. This takes a bit of work to get it even, as the pastry cream goes quite solid:

I made a slight modification to Joe's recipe. I macerated some strawberries I happened to have in icing sugar and Framboise …

… and mixed the result …

… with whipped cream instead of making Joe's Chantilly Cream. It's less sweet, and the acid of the strawberries cuts the sweetness even more:

The smaller rings wouldn't fit on one plate, so I chopped a bit out and turned them into linked rings, then started filling. First the pastry cream …

… then unsweetened whipped cream (small rings) and strawberry whipped cream (big ring) …

… and the tops:

They were very popular, and I only had to eat one portion myself. Which is good, because I'm still losing weight.

Jalapeño poppers for the freezer

I fell in love with jalapeño poppers in America. Horribly fattening as they are in most of their forms, they are sooo delicious.

We don't get jalapeños in big bins in the supermarket here; they are a real treat, purchased by the pepper at about $1 each. I got some from the Farmer's Market when I took Matthias in to town the other weekend. I was planning on popper-ising some and smoking some, but I ended up just popper-ising. And I froze them because I'm being quite good about my diet.

So, Some nice big jalapeños …

… and some Mexican chorizo from the freezer. It's been there a while and is a bit freezer burnt, but it's OK:

I defrosted and fried off the chorizo …

… then cooled it down a bit and mixed it with grated cheese:

I decapitated and deseeded the jalapeños …

… then stuffed them with the chorizo-cheese mixture:

Then I double crumbed them:

Getting the egg and crumbs to stick to a shiny pepper is not easy. After I finally managed to do it I looked up the internet for hints - turns out it sticks better if you run a citrus zester over the skin first - which makes sense. Then if you refrigerate the things between the two crumbings it's supposed to help too. Next time I'll know better.

Anyway, these are in the freezer waiting for me to be thinner - Although I'm wondering if they might be quite good baked instead of fried - they'd definitely be a lot less fattening - almost healthy even.