Glacé kiwifruit

Wil and Nic brought a bunch of fruit when they came to stay, including three kiwifruit I didn't know what to do with. I didn't feel like just eating them, yummy though they are, so I had a go at making glacé kiwifruit, and I'll be doing it again in much larger quantities.

It's a reasonably long process, but doesn't require much actual work. First you peel and slice the fruit, then you parboil it and soak it in increasingly sugary syrup over several days, then you dry it.

This is my little batch in the oven at 50°C:


And here it is all finished:


It didn't last long, I couldn't stop nibbling until it was all gone. So much nicer than the crystallised stuff you get in the supermarket.

Recipe

Crystallised fruit

Ingredients
fruit
sugar (make sure you have plenty)

Method
Prepare fruit by peeling things like kiwifruit and stoning things like plums and cherries. Basically get it ready for eating.
Cut into bite-sized pieces, if slicing don't slice too thinly. About 1 cm is right. Leave small things like cherries whole.
Put in a pot and just cover with water. Bring to boiling point and simmer until the fruit is about half cooked. With kiwifruit this is about a minute!
Remove the fruit from the pot and put it in a non-reactive bowl. I used a small pyrex dish with a lid.
Return the cooking water to the pot and add 200g of sugar to each cup and a quarter of cooking water (henceforth all amounts are relative to this). Dissolve, bring to the boil, and pour over the fruit. Cover it.
* Next day drain the juice back into a pot and add 50 g sugar, dissolve, bring to the boil, pour back over fruit.
Repeat from * daily for five days.
Drain fruit, reserving thick syrup to use as an ice-cream topping or suchlike.
Place fruit on a wire rack and leave to dry in either a sunny spot or a very low (50°C) oven.

Scotch eggs

Three peeled hard boiled eggs …


… and about two cups of sausagemeat (this is home-made, with just pork, salt, garlic, and ground coriander in it) …


… the pork wrapped around the eggs …


… and moulded with the hands so they're well covered with no gaps:


Then rolled in dried breadcrumbs …


… before browning on all sides in a frying pan (you're actually supposed to deep-fry them but I couldn't be bothered getting out the deep fryer for three eggs) …


… then placing in a 180°C oven for 20 minutes or so to finish cooking (not necessary if deep-frying) …


… being particularly careful to remember that the frypan handle stays hot for quite a while after it's been removed from the oven.

I didn't burn myself too badly, …


… and the Scotch eggs were delicious in my lunches for the next few days.

Lemon frozen yoghurt

Three cups of home-made yoghurt mixed with a cup of white sugar and the juice and grated rind of two lemons then churned in the ice-cream machine:


Heavenly.

Pork and plantain curry

The other week when I was setting up another batch of Spanish chorizo (no I'm not eating it all, I'm giving most of it away) I had about 600g of pork trimmings I hadn't used.

I peeled and chopped a plantain …


… and put it in my small slow cooker with the diced pork before adding some yellow Thai curry paste, tamarind paste, and a block of palm sugar:


Then I put in some powdered coconut milk and water, stuck the bit of bone from the pork shoulder on top and turned it on low for the day:


I snacked on the cooked bone and had 1/3 of the curry on rice for my dinner …


… and froze the other two helpings.

Yes that's yellow rice - it was left over from the night we had chilli for dinner, I'd cooked it with a bit of tumeric.

Vegetarian chilli

A bit of a catch-up is due. This vegetarian chilli is something I made a couple of weeks ago when my friends Wil and Nic were staying.

Black-eyed peas that had been soaked overnight and par-boiled …


… and peeled and diced kabocha squash …


… went into the slow cooker with a diced onion, some chopped garlic, a couple of tinned chipotles in adobo, a good squeeze of tomato paste, a teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander, half a teaspoon of cayenne, and some water:


I stirred it around …


… then covered it, turned it on low, and went to work. When I came home nine hours later it was ready:


And delicious.

Recipe

Black-eyed pea and kabocha squash chilli

Ingredients
Half a kabocha or buttercup squash (these are almost identical; sweet and dry-fleshed) peeled and diced into one inch pieces.
A cup of dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight in water and drained.
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 chipotles in adobo, chopped, or dried chipotles soaked overnight, or any other chili you may like with a little liquid smoke

a slow cooker, at least 3 litres in volume.

Method
Boil peas in fresh water for 10 minutes or so, then drain and put into slow cooker with the rest of the ingredients.
Add water to almost cover, stir.
Put lid on slow cooker, turn to "low" and leave for eight hours or so.
Serve with rice, or use as a filling for enchiladas.

Ham and Bone

I bought a leg of pork today. It was on special at $6.99/kg and was nearly 10kg. Just about tore my arm off carrying it back to work from the supermarket. It's going to become prosciutto; I'll post about the process when I do it. I actually have a few posts to do, but I've been flat out at work and just feeling like collapsing when I get home. And it's cold so I snuggle up in bed with a book and a hot water bottle.

These bone-coloured shoes are a recent purchase:

I saw them a few months ago and liked them, but they were too expensive for the wear I'd get out of them. Then I was in the shop the other day and they had just one pair left. My size, and half price. How could I resist? I don't have any other heels this colour either. And they're relatively sensible.