Autumn Fruit Salad

A couple of weeks ago at college I was struggling though the finer points of tax accounting when my mind drifted (as is its wont) to food, and more specifically figs.

The stalls at Chapel Market had been heaving under the weight of plump velvety figs and I had been thinking about how they signify Autumn for me - around September/October every year as the leaves start to turn, London succumbs to a glut of figs. On street stalls and markets there are big fat purple figs aplenty. And I love them.

So I thought I wanted to celebrate them and their heralding of autumnalness.

Slowly a plan starting to form - Apple crisps that looked like leaves; nuts, that seem autumnal to me (although, are they?!); bright physalis the colour of golden leaves; pears, also lovely this time of year; a hint of alcohol to warm up the seasonal chill...

And lo, my autumnal fruit salad was born! I think it'd make a really pretty and tasty dessert for a nice meal - light without being too saintly and virtuous, and simple but a little special too.

Autumn Fruit Salad
(Serves 4)

1. Poach your pears
- Peel and quarter lengthways 3 slightly unripe, or only-just ripe conference pears. Place them in a saucepan with enough red wine to cover them (or add a little water if you don't want to use so much wine). You can add a cinnamon stick, some cloves and/or some orange peel for extra spice at this stage if you like.
- Bring to the boil and let simmer slowly for 10-15 minutes until soft through to the poke of a knife (Don't over cook though!)
- Take out and leave to cool.

2. Make your apple crisps
- Core and slice one apple (I like Pink Lady apples for this) very thinly. As thinly as humanly possible! (I did it with a knife, but I guess if you have a mandolin that'll be better). Lay them on baking paper on a baking tray and scatter scantly with caster sugar.
- Bake in a low oven (about 120C) for 30-40 mins, turning halfway and sprinkling sugar on the other side. They should be nice and crisp when done.

3. Toast some almond flakes
- Take about 75g almond flakes and heat in a frying pan, tossing regularly until just browned and smelling delicious.

4. Compose
- Trim and quarter 6 ripe figs
- Halve 16 physalis
- Chop pears into chunks
- Optional: Quarter 6 unsulphured dried apricots.
- Pile the figs, pears, physalis and apricots stylishly on little plates and scatter with almond flakes and apple crisps.

5. Serve as is or with rick greek yoghurt.

Apple and cinnamon cupcake

Making cupcakes is always fun. There's something just a little frivolous about bite size cakes and their pretty frilly cases.

These ones are very moist and appley, streaked through the middle with a band of cinnamon sugar and crunchy with the same on top. Very tasty.

The recipe is adapted from a very cute little book called simply cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans.

Without further ado:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup sugar and 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3. In another bowl mix 1 cup grated cooking apple with 2 tablespoons of the cinnamon sugar mixture
4. In a larger bowl stir 1 1/4 cups plain flour, 3/4 cup soft brown sugar, 3/4 tsp baking soda and a pinch of salt together, and make a well in the centre
5. Add 2 eggs, 1 cup sunflower oil and 1 tsp vanilla extract and mix well
6. Stir in the apple mixture with any juice that has been released
7. Put 12 cupcake papers into a muffin tray and half fill each with mixture
8. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of cinnamon sugar over each one and top up with more mixture
9. Use a pastry brush to dab the top of the batter with the melted butter and sprinkle a tsp of cinnamon sugar on top of each
10. Bake until the tops are light brown and a knife inserted comes out clean; about 25 minutes

banana bread

What to do when mid-afternoon in midsummer looks as ominous as this?

Storm clouds, thunder and lightning, hail stones as big as golf balls... Summer has forgotten its lines...

What to do in the face of such seasonal craziness? Bake banana bread of course. Well..., of course.

That's how it seemed to me anyway (especially as we had a fruit bowl of formerly yellow bananas lazily ripening into an inedible slush). It is good for this winter-summer though; it's got the sweetness and soft cakiness of wintery comfort food but the sunshiny taste of summer.

Banana and Walnut Loaf
adapted from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course

* Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 350F (180C)
* Grease a loaf tin, 9x19cm, or equivalent
* Beat 3oz soft butter with 4oz caster sugar
* Add in a beaten egg, slowly, and beat well
* Stir in 8oz plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder and a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
* Mash 3 bananas and add to the mixture, along with the grated rind of an orange, the grated rind of a lemon and 2oz roughly chopped walnuts
* Transfer to the loaf tin and pop in the oven for 50-55 minutes, until the loaf is golden, well-risen and springs back.
* Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then loosen round the edges and turn out to finish cooling on a wire tray.

Peaches on Toast

This is one of those things you make when you’re bored and you fancy cooking but there’s really very little to cook and you can’t be bothered to go to the shop or do something proper so you just gather up the few edible items around, apply your ingenuity, imagine you are on Ready Steady Cook…

… and most of the time you end up with horrible student-esque concoctions, things like the flapjacks I tried to make without instructions, which were just a sticky over-sweet mess that I nevertheless devoured in one sitting. Or like the soup I once made from swede and cabbage (it was awful; really truly awful, don’t try it). Or frozen broad beans fried with onions and bread and bits of old cheese… Yum.

Anyway, this one happened to be a more happy experiment. It’s very very simple, but very very good. All you will do is pluck a ripe peach (or plum, or nectarine) from the fruit bowl, stone it and slice it. You’ll dip the slices into icing sugar then lay them in a heated frying pan and cook them on both sides until they are soft and brown and bubbling.

Then you’ll slice some crusty white bread and pop it in the toaster. And you’ll lay the peach slices on top of the toast, drizzling over whatever juices you can get out of the pan. And you’ll eat it and it will be like super super deluxe bread and jam, monstrously fruity and satisfyingly sickly sweet and slightly naughty.

Mmmmm Cardamommm...

Was it just my imagination, I thought, or did the subtly spicy milky coffee I just supped as I reclined on the sofa, settle in my belly with a warmth like the physical feeling of happy contentedness?

I had got home a little earlier from a lazy day enjoying the city, and had decided to crack in to my treat to myself of a bar of the beautiful blue and white packaged Rococo chocolate. Discovering I had unwittingly bought white instead of dark chocolate I was momentarily disappointed. (I’m not a big fan of the pale stuff.) However, the cardamom it was infused with converted it completely from a sweet milky confection to something regal and intriguing and good.

I hadn’t had cardamom for ages - my first memories of it are of surprising chewy mouthfuls of a strong bitterness, when encountering whole pods in Dad Saucepan’s curries. And, its reputation stained by childhood distrust, I hadn’t afforded it a place in much of my cooking. Like much met with an older palate, it was joyous then to rediscover and re-learn the flavour and to find I really – really – liked it…

Inspired by this discovery, I found an old jar of pods in the spices collection, smashed some up and added them to the milk I heated to make the aforementioned coffee, with its feelgood aftertaste.

And, carried away on a wave of fondness for my new best spicy friend, I set to augmenting a recent VE&T cake recipe, which turned out pretty nicely...


Spiced Summer Fruit Mini Cakes

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Sift 200g plain flour with 75g ground almonds, 2 tsps baking powder, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds and ½ tsp salt into a bowl.
Beat 125g butter, 220g dark brown sugar together until pale and fluffy
Add 3 eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
Add 150g sour cream, beat until just combined and then stir in flour mixture, followed by 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits (I used frozen ones defrosted and drained).
Grease a muffin tin, spoon in the batter and scatter another 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits on top.
Bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Cool in tins for 5 mins before turning out.

PS - I’ve since discovered an utterly luxurious breakfast from a Jane Clarke article in the Times – you put a couple of crushed cardamom pods in with your porridge, and serve it with pomegranate segments and some thick greek yoghurt. It’s divine.

Savour it

...those moments that make you stop and smile and appreciate.

Some of mine from the week just gone:

• The novelty of staying in posh hotels for work - mini shampoos! cleaned rooms! new biscuits every day!

Daffodils and crocuses signalling the beginning of the end of the gloominess with their brazenly cheerful petals

Finding a new good book to get into on the tube - (Bel Canto by Ann Patchett)

Radiator-warmed trousers ready for post-work lounging

Surprisingly succesful crumbly sweet pastry

...

The last of which, I would like to share with you. I was planning to make cooked pears to eat with yoghurt for breakfast. I HEART cooked pears. It was a sunny lazy kind of morning however, and I found myself idling, vaguely thinking and reading the paper as I sliced. And they emerged from my fingers uniform and slim, not chunky for stewing. I was arranging them all neat in the bottom of the pan. Obviously my subconscious had been thinking about tarts. So, what else could I do but return to the little shop for butter and flour? Breakfast fell by the wayside, and I settled in to improvise a pear tart. I don't believe there are many better things to do with a saturday morning.

Now I wasn't actually going to mention the words, those alliterative beauties. But I can not kid myself that that was the platonic ideal - the mighty Tarte Tatin... But, you see, I have issues with tarte tatin. I tried it once and the caramel went wrong and it fell in a heap and the pastry was Awful, and I felt a little tricked and unamused.

So, I didn't put any pressure on. It's not a pear T---- T----, I told myself, it's merely a pear tart, upside down. Which really it is, because I couldn't be bothered with the caramel sauce.

And besides there are a million and one recipes for the TT. But in case you too are afeared of it, or you just quite fancy a plain Pear Upside Down Tart, then I thought I would share with you that this is: 1. very simple 2. fun to make (it's all that flipping out and watching the pastry float and brown above its fruity load) and 3. so tasty I polished the whole lot of in a day (NB - this is not recommended; try and make it when you are in the company of hungry people not avoiding white flour and sugar).

So, without further ado:

An Upside Down Tart of Pears...

4oz flour
2oz butter
2oz caster sugar
about 4 or 5 smallish pears
another few slices of butter (maybe 1 or 2oz)
another few spoonfuls of sugar (probably 4 or 5 dessertspoons)

1. Peel, core and slice the pears, and arrange in a frying pan that is ovenproof (I didn't peel mine, but I should have)
2. Put over a low heat with some slivers of butter and a sprinkling of sugar. Put a lid on and heat until it's all starting to cook
3. Add a little more butter and sugar and cook for a little longer with the lid off until it's going all brown and caramelly
Meanwhile...
4. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs
5. Drip in a little cold water - a teaspoon at a time, cutting it in with a knife until the breadcrumbs turn into bigger lumbs you can push into a soft dough - you will not need more than 2 tablespoons of water, probably more like 1. Err on the side of caution
6. Roll out your dough to a little larger than the size of the pan
7. When the pears are soft and covered in a sugary sauce, put a few more slivers of butter and sprinklings of sugar on for good measure, and then cover with the dough, tucking in the edges round the pears as best you can
8. Put in a preheated oven at 200C for about 20-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown
9. Cross your fingers, cover the pan with a plate and flip the whole lot over - hopefully it'll fall out, all golden and triumphant
10. Serve warm with greek yoghurt, or cream, as you like...

It's alive!

OK, I know I've posted a lot of fruit recently, but I promise this will be the last of that little un-anticipated series. I just can't help but share with you the bounty I found in the garden when I last went back to my parents' house.

Hidden pumpkin babies peeking out from the compost heap!


Showers of alien-looking blackberries next to the back fence!


A chandelier of crunchy apples!


Victoria plums diving off the trees every time the wind blows...

To me, being amongst green and growing things is a pure and unadulterated pleasure in itself. But when those growing things bear food, alive in the earth which nurtured it, it's doubly good.

In praise of the greengage

The greengage is a curiously overlooked fruit. I suppose against the big, bold, sumptuously fragranced and summer-coloured stone fruits – the peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots – it doesn’t shout much for itself. It looks small and, well, green… unripe perhaps the uninitiated might think.

But those who overlook this little verdant fruit are missing out. For me, it is one of the best summer fruits, one of the fruits closest to my heart.

We have a greengage tree in my family home, but unfortunately it’s rarely ever borne more than three or four tiny but perfect fruits. It’s feeble effort has marked the greengage in my mind with the anthropomorphic characteristics of a plucky survivor, an under-achiever, a shy, retiring, struggling kind of fruit, unlike the plentiful Victoria and purple plums which rained down from the trees either side of it.

And maybe because the fruit were so rare, it made them all the more precious. Each summer would only provide me with one or two sugar-packed emerald mouthfuls.

Putting all that sentimentality aside though, I truly do think this is a king among fruit. It’s just so packed full of its particular summer taste; so perfect in its balance of sugar and tartness and flavour.

The supermarkets can’t really do it justice, but luckily London is blessed with a multitude of small fruit and veg tradespeople, who man little stands on many busy streets. So just a short walk from the office I can buy half a pound of greengages for 60p, and even if it’s grey and miserable like today, I can stand amidst the grime and bustle of the city and be wrapped up in a little sunshiny world as I pop each little gage straight out of the paper bag and into my mouth.

A little extra information…

The fabulous Wikipedia tells me that:

“The Greengage is an edible drupaceous fruit, a cultivar of the plum, Prunus domestica 'Reine Claude'. It was developed in France from a green-fruited wild plum originally found in Asia Minor. It is identified by its small, oval shape, smooth-textured flesh, and ranging in colour from green to yellow, grown in temperate areas. They are known for their rich, confectionery flavour that cause them to be considered one of the finest dessert plums.

The name 'Reine Claude' is after the Queen-consort of King Francis I of France. "Green Gages" were imported into England from France in 1724 by Sir William Gage, 2nd Baronet of Hengrave, from whom they get their English name. Allegedly, the labels identifying the French plum trees were lost in transit to Gage's home in Bury St Edmunds. Soon after, Greengages were cultivated in the American colonies, even taking a place on the plantations of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. However, their cultivation in North America has declined significantly since the Eighteenth Century.”

I heart cherries

Mmmmmmmm...............

It's hot and I have big fat juicy shiny sweet cherries.

Life is good.

If you can't beat them... stew them

What is it about supermarkets and fruit? Do they imagine that I purchase plums because I can not work out where to buy cricket balls? Do they think I am going to test the quality of my nectarines by dropping them from a three-storey building? Maybe they believe I want to use apricots as missiles to scare away neighbourhood cats digging up my gardens...

Ok, or perhaps it is just to do with such boring issues as shelf life and profit margins and transportation. Whatever, they seem universally unknowledgable of the concept of 'ripe'.

When I can I'll buy my fruit from markets, or the stalls on the streets who can manage to procure fruit that actually smells and feels like fruit... But more often than not it's late when I'm shopping and I'm in a big refrigerated building with a basket.

Peaches and nectarines do often ripen if left on the side, but I ended up last week with a punnet of plums threatening to chip my molars.

So, not too confident that they would ever reach the luscious maturity they should have been allowed to, I decided the only way forward was breaking them down.

Halved and stoned, I popped them in a pan with a cinnamon stick, some orange peel and a sprinkling of brown sugar. After 30 or so minutes they succumbed to the gentle heating and were bubbling happily, soft and fragrant, in a fabulously pink viscous sauce. (NB - a note of caution, don't go and watch Big Brother whilst they are on, unless you have a big saucepan and a very low heat - otherwise your hob, as mine, may end up looking like a fantastic vermilion swimming pool).

As it happens, this compote was the serendipitous answer to my breakfast woes - with yoga before work, I don't have time to breakfast at home. A pot of compote and a pot of thick greek yoghurt in the work fridge means I have been able to easily fill my belly every morning with a summery fruity bowl of pink and white. yum!