Season of Mists...

Agrumi Lawn, with morning autumn sunshine,
and persimmons on the table

Autumn foliage, cascading down the Cypress
at the end of the Lily-pond

Tonight's Dinner:

Melanzane alla Parmigiana

Chicken Jalfrezi

Tarte Bordaloue

The Almond Harvest

A basket of almonds, de-husked

Local peasant at work, de-husking

And the diminutive pile of shelled almonds at the end of the process!

Tonight's dinner:

Curried chicken liver croissants

Celery Risotto

Budino Toscana

Tiramisu with strega

This is a version of Jill Norman's version, where she used grappa, and I've replaced it with Strega (which has a flavour as well as a hit....whilst grappa , at least when consumed like this, really only has a hit). This method produces a tiramisu which is light as love, and is a completely different animal from the usual version, which - let's face it - can be a bit unremitting, and certainly has a tendency to sit heavy on the stomach.

Follow the construction method here to make either one large tiramisu, or make them in individual 10 cm ramekins. If doing the latter, then put crossed strips of foil across the base of the ramekin before you start, so that you can then un-mould the individual desserts, keeping them the same way up as they were made, for serving.

For six.

Ingredients: 4 egg yolks; 100g + 2 tbs sugar; 400g mascarpone; 4 tbs strega; 2 egg whites; approx 30 savoiardi biscuits (lady fingers); 1 glass water; 1 glass Marsala. Powdered chocolate.

Method:

1. Beat the egg  yolks with the sugar, then mix in and fully amalgamate the mascarpone and the strega. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, and then fold into the mascarpone cream.

3. Grease the bowl or ramekins in which the dessert is to be made, and if using ramekins, line them with crossed strips of foil (also greased) to enable ease of serving.

4. Mix the water and marsala together in a flat shallow dish, and quickly dunk the biscuits in this mixture as you go along, just before you use them to make the layers of the tiramisu.

5. Starting with a layer of bscuuits, alternate layees of biscuits and then of cream until all the cream mixture has been used up, and finishing with a layer of the cream mixture. In practice, I generally find that in individual ramekins I have made two layers of biscuit topped with two layers of cream, whilst in one bowl I'm more likely to have had three layers of each.

6. Refrigerate the dessert(s) for at least 2 hours, and up to ten hours. Just before serving, sprinkle the top of the tiramisu with powdered chocolate.

Ham & Mushroom crepes, fried

I've been rediscovering Robert Carrier, to best effect from his first, and probably greatest book: Great Dishes of the World. All sorts of gems, which have presumably been largely forgotten in the half-century (and more) since this splendid tome was first published: Rabbit in cream is one such which immediately springs to mind.   The dessert section is excellent - although n.b that the quantities of sugar need to be severely cut, to be suitable for now ....we seem to have much less of a sweet-tooth now than they had back then (also true in dessert recipes from Anna del Conte, I've found, and quite a few others who were writing in the sixties and seventies...although, interestingly, not Jane Grigson, or early Anne Willan, or Paula Wolfert. Maybe it isn't a 'period' thing  but merely  the fact of certain people having liked sugar more than others....who knows?)
This particular recipe is extremely good, and it has the twist - for me, at any rate - of introducing the idea of frying crepes, once stuffed, rather than merely heating them through in the oven. The difference is astonishing: texturally, the crispness of the fried crepe and the softness of the filling raises the dish to another level; I now use this method for all stuffed crepe treatments, whether sweet or savoury.

For Four:

Ingredients: crepe batter made with 1 egg, 42g plain flour, 4 fl oz milk, 1 pinch of salt; 50g butter; 125g mushrooms, chopped; juice of half a lemon; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 28g flour; 10 fl oz milk; 125g cooked ham, chopped; 2 tbs parsley, finely chopped;  salt and pepper. 50g butter, for frying.

Method:

1. Make four crepes, by the standard method.

2. Melt half the butter in a frying pan, and in this cook the chopped muchrooms with the lemon juice for a couple of minutes.

3. In a simmertopf or double boiler, melt the remaining butter, and in this soften the chopped onion for five minutes or so, until properly softened. Add the flour and then the milk to make an onion-bechamel, stirring until the sauce is thick and smooth.

4. Fold into the bechamel the mushrooms, along with the cooked ham and parsley. Add seasoning to taste.

5. Use the filling to stuff the four crepes, spring-roll style, to make four completely enclosed packages.

6. In a frying pan large enough to accommodate all four stuffed crepes, melt the remaining butter, and fry the crepes in it for two minutes or so on each side until brown and crisp.

Serve immediately.

Shrimp Fritters

These are astonishingly good! The name sounds dull - possibly in spanish, it comes across better: 'tortillitas de camarones'. However you choose to call them, they are beyond mouth-watering, and are the best new culinary discovery I've made in a very long time. Served as a starter, they are very, very more-ish...
This recipe is another gem from Elizabeth Luard's 'Classic Spanish Cooking', which I highly recommend.

For about ten fritters:

Ingredients: 4 tbs bread flour; 1 tbs semola flour; 6 tbs water; 2 tbs oil; half tsp bicarbonate of soda; half tsp salt; quarter tsp paprika; 1 tbs finely chopped onion; 1 tbs chopped parsley; 125g finely chopped peeled shrimp. Oil, for frying.

Method:

1. Combine the flour, semola, salt, bicarbonate of soda and paprika in a bowl, and add to them the water and oil. Using a fork, mix well, to make a batter.

2. Stir into the batter the parsley, onion, and shrimp, and mix to amalgamate thoroughly.

3. In a wide, shallow pan (I use a large saute pan, for best results...you want something where the individual fritters have plenty of space around them), heat two fingers' depth of oil, until it starts to shimmer. It should be very hot.

4. Drop the batter into the oil in 1 tbs amounts. Allow to fry for about a minute, then flatten each one with the back of a metal spoon, and use a palette knife to ensure thay haven't got stuck to the bottom of the pan in the process. After a couple of minutes cooking, turn the fritters over - the underside should by now be a golden dark brown. Continue to cook for a couple more minutes, then take them out of the oil and drain them briefly on kitchen paper.

Serve while still hot. They are wonderful!

Spanish Apple Pudding

I'm having a summer of Spanish cooking. Which, I find, is very often a more sophisticated version of Italian fare; where the latter is so often and very clearly the product of peasant kitchens and resources, its Spanish cousin is the result of centuries of a rich Royal Court, and a more varied and evolved culinary experience. For summer menus, now that the days are long and hot, and the evenings perfect for al fresco dining, Spanish dishes could not be bettered: light, and fresh, and deceptively uncomplicated in style.
From the pages of Penelope Casas (of long acquaintance), and of Elizabeth Luard (who I have never previously read from a purely  'Spanish' angle), and of Janet Mendel (a completely new find), I've been extracting splendid new nuggets. Of which this is one.
When I first started to make it, as I assembled the ingredients in the pan, a suspicion began to form in my mind that this was all very familiar, and that all it would be would be the puree that forms the base of a regular tarte aux pommes. And, when you see what the ingredients are, you'll understand why. But, not so. I'm unclear by what precise alchemy - perhaps merely the surprising length of the cooking time - but the finished product here is unlike anything else I've ever come across. And, it is good!
Serve it with cold, vanilla-flavoured Creme Anglaise. Cream, on its own, would be too one-note-ish, and the delicate flavour of the vanilla offsets the dense sweetness of the apple pudding to perfection.

For three:

Ingredients: 4 medium-large apples; 5 tbs + 8 tbs sugar; 4 tbs butter; 1 tsp lemon juice; zest from half a lemon; 1/4 tsp cinnamon; a pinch of salt; 2 medium eggs.

Method:

1. Make a caramel, using the 8 tbs sugar along with 4 teaspoons of water. Once ready, pour this into three small (internal dimension approx 8 x 5 cm) ramekins, already greased.

2. Peel and dice the apples, and place them in a small pan along with all of the rest of the ingredients, apart from the eggs; cook, covered, very slowly, for three hours. By which time they will almost entirely have collapsed,and the mixture will be quite dense.

3. Allow the mixture to cool, and then mix into it the two eggs, lightly beaten. Divide this mixture between the three ramekins, and then place them in a bain amrie and cook them in an oven pre-heated to 175 degrees C for one and a half hours.

4. Allow to cool to room temperature, and un-mould the puddings onto soup plates. Serve, surrounded with light, vanilla-flavoured creme anglaise. Exquisite!

Stuffed Vine Leaves

This was one of my offerings in our recent Masterchef Weekend (2017). Not the greek version, of very long memory, but one from Spain, with a much more interesting flavour than the lemon and rice one, which IMHO has always seemed rather one-note-ish (and that a rather brackish flavour, which could be lemon or could be vinegar, but either way is an acquired taste rather than an obvious argument). The spanish version uses a mixture of  varieties of meat in the stuffing, and is cooked in a light tomato sauce.
Most recipes specify vine leaves which have been preserved in brine, which are generally available, but with a garden full of fresh vine leaves for around ten months of the year, it seemed daft not to use them, and so, I did. It was a toss-up between leaves from the muscat vine, or from the fragola vine - the latter were larger, and seemed more robust, and so the first time I did this recipe, I used these - in practice, the smaller leaves are just as strong, and arguably more tender. I suspect the larger and tougher the leaves are, then the longer you have to blanch them in order to get rid of any residual leatheriness.
This is a peasant dish, and so although I've given precise quantities of ingredients here, I imagine it's really one of those dishes where you use whatever you have, in what seem like sensible amounts. One of those dishes where an Eliza Acton or a Hannah Glasse would have said merely 'mix together a quantity of the following things...' and then proceed to list anything and everything which might be included.
Good served either hot or cold. We have now - rather early for the year - entered deep summer, and so cold food is the obvious choice: chilled food and chilled wine, served late in the evening, as the temperature comes down to a beautiful softness.  Served hot, as a winter appetiser, though, this would be equally good, near a blazing fire.

Ingredients: 16 vine leaves (either fresh, or in brine); 250g veal; 1 cup chopped cooked ham; 1 chicken breast, skinless & boneless; 2 tbs minced parsley; 2 large garlic cloves, minced; 2 slices bread, crusts removed, and soaked in a little milk; half a cup tomato sauce (simmer a can of tinned tomatoes in a little oil for fifteen minutes or so, until all has thickened and resolved itself into sauce texture, then seasoned as appropriate); half a cup chicken stock.

Method:

1. If the vine leaves are fresh, blanch them in lots  of boiling water for about five minutes, then refresh in cold water, then lay them between tea towels to dry. (I suspect you do much the same if they're in brine, but I imagine it would tell you in the jar).

2. Process all the rest of the ingredients (apart from the tomato sauce and all but 4 tbs of the stock), taste, and season as appropriate.

3. Fill each leaf with a couple of tbs of filling, then roll it up as if for a spring roll (i.e. tuck the bottom of the leaf nearest you over the filling, then fold in the sides, and roll it up, away from you).

4. Put the remaining stock and the tomato sauce in the bottom of a pan (one with a lid) and place the stuffed leaves in one layer on top, seams facing down, and quite tightly packed. Cover the pan and simmer for about half an hour, over low heat. Serve, with the sauce from the pan spooned over.

If to be served cold, cover and leave in the fridge for at least a few hours beforehand.