Egg heads

When I was little, my parents used to put faces on hard-boiled eggs as a surprise for us children on Easter day. Then when I was a bit older, I took over the custom.

One year I made a woman with a cloud of white cotton-wool hair, red cheeks, and fierce blue eyes behind spectacles. My father, who liked to give names to these egg faces, called her ’Miss Florrie Smithwick M.A.’ The name was so perfect for her that I still laugh about it, decades later.

Anyway, these 2 faces which I made today represent the struggle I’m undergoing with regard to buying or not buying an Italian Easter Egg. It’s so tempting, but they’re all so big!

Who will win, devil or angel?

So far the Angel has won, but when they’re reduced in price after Easter, who knows?

Silver Lining

I love snow. I’m not into Winter sports or anything like that, but I have wonderful childhood memories of watching it fall, playing in it, being cut off so that I didn’t have to go to school …

Not everyone is like me, though. Clive in fact hates snow; his memories are all about shivering with cold and chopping firewood.

As far as Clive is concerned, there was a silver lining to the cloud of our recent days of imprisonment by the snow, when we were unable to go shopping: we got to the bottom of the chest freezer.

When we first bought the chest freezer we were delighted with its capaciousness and stowed things away looking forward to being able to eat them whenever we wanted.

How wrong we were. We continued to pile things in, and only ever turned over the items at the top because the rest were lost to view and frosted in.

These last days we were forced to have recourse to deeper and deeper layers.

We eventually reached the bottom stratum: a shelf of ice in which bags of frozen peas, packets of fish fillets and containers of stewed figs were embedded like fossils in a rock.

The jewel in the crown, so to speak, of this rock shelf was a gammon steak which had afforded us tantalising glimpses but never sufficient purchase to prise it off the bottom.

The gammon steak gave us 6 person-meals and the chest freezer is now empty, clean and frost free ready for the next cycle.

Frozen red and yellow raspberries

The raspberries in the photo were frozen in stripes of colour although the freezing process has made their colours more similar. You can eat raspberries still frozen and they’re very good.

Quinces

Quinces - green ones were picked earlier & stored; yellow ones were tree-ripened

Today I picked the last of the quinces. They’re certainly ripe – much bigger than they were even a couple of weeks ago, and yellow all over. They came off the twig with only a slight twist.

They have quite a strong smell: not vanilla and pineapple as the internet led me to believe, but like a pear, except fresher and sweeter and without any ‘peardrop’ element. There’s also an undertone of sour green apple.

They’re very heavy – the bigger ones weigh half a kilogram each.

The flesh is firm and opaque, with a consistency a bit like that of an eggplant – more vegetable than fruit.

To taste, they’re slightly astringent and sour but not sharp, like a cooking apple that’s been peeled and left exposed to the air. Perfectly edible, but a bit of an acquired taste.

We made a huge quince-and-lemon slab cake and 8 jars of quince jam. Cake and jam utilise all of the fruit apart from the skin and the core, unlike jelly.

There are still a few quinces left!

RECIPE FOR QUINCE AND LEMON CAKE

• 1000g peeled, cored, and sliced quinces
• 700g ’00′ flour (plain)
• 600g sugar
• 525ml olive oil (sunflower oil will make a lighter cake)
• 38ml lemon essence
• 4 eggs
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tablespoons of salt

All quantities are approximate!

1. Thoroughly grease large oven dish
2. Microwave quince slices until they are soft, then put through a blender
3. Mix together flour, sugar,  salt and baking powder in a large container (I used a wok!)
4. Add olive oil and mix until all dry content has been blended in with the oil
5. Add eggs and quince pulp
6. Mix together thoroughly
7. Stir in the lemon essence
8. Pour into oven dish and cook on very low heat (I used around 160C) for about an hour (although check after 45 mins)
9. Turn out and allow to cool

Pomegranates

A pomegranate is a good companion to watching a tv football match, I find. There’s a certain mindless rhythm to picking out the seeds which helps to soothe my anguish at the injustices meted out to our favoured team, Chelsea.

Half a pomegranate

Although, come to think of it, a pomegranate isn’t the most rewarding of fruits. The hard white grains rather spoil the experience of the juicy globules.

The pomegranates I’m eating at the moment aren’t quite ripe. I’ve picked them because they split open while still on the tree.

Peach and almond cake

It’s been a disaster of a day, mainly because of the water cut which started last night. I’d planned to do a couple of loads of washing, put the dishwasher on, wash up the pots and pans that don’t fit in the dishwasher, and wash my hair – all standard Sunday activities, all thwarted.

 

Although the water came back on just after lunch, it almost immediately went off again, presumably nicked by someone refilling their private reservoir.

 

Meantime I’d started the dishwasher up but had to turn it off again and trap all the dishes inside.

 

Then it started to rain which meant I couldn’t relieve my frustration by doing some gardening.

 

Clive, meantime, had soldiered away at peeling the mountain of tiny peaches we’ve accumulated. He proceeded to turn them into a 3-kilogramme cake.

 

Peach and almond cake

At least something good came out of today.

Here is his recipe.

 

RECIPE FOR PEACH AND ALMOND CAKE

• 1000g (1kg) of peach slices
• 200g shelled whole almonds
• 700g ’00′ flour (plain)
• 600g sugar
• 525ml olive oil (sunflower oil will make a lighter cake)
• 4 eggs
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tablespoons of salt

All quantities are approximate!

Thoroughly grease large oven dish

Separate large peach pieces from pulpy bits such that you have about 300g of peach pieces and 700g of peachy pulp

Mix together flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large container (I used a wok!)

Add olive oil and mix until all dry content has been blended in with the oil

Add eggs and peach pulp

Blend together (I used a hand blender) until mixture is very liquid and a bit lumpy from the peach pulp

Stir in the almonds and peach pieces until well distributed into the mix

Pour into oven dish and cook on very low heat (I used around 160C) for about an hour (although check after 45 mins)

Turn out and allow to cool