FRUITY TEACAKE AND RASPBERRY ALMOND BITES

My daughter-in-law is arriving this afternoon with two grandsons, Aiden and Alex. I thought I would do some baking to stock up the goody tin!
I do like a nice teabread. I have made several versions in the past but this sounded nice with the orange in.

FRUITY TEACAKE
300g mixed dried fruit
225ml hot tea
juice 1 orange plus zest
50g butter
100g soft brown sugar
1 egg
222g self raising flour
4 tbsp demerara sugar ( I used 2)

Place the dried fruits in a bowl and pour over the hot tea, orange juice and zest. Cover and leave for at least 4 hours or better, overnight.
Heat the oven to 180C/160Cfan. Grease and line a loaf tin. Beat together the butter and sugar until creamy then beat in egg followed by flour. Stir in fruit. Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth the surface. Sprinkle all over with the demerara sugar.
Bake for 1 hour until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in tin then turn out. This cake keeps really well.

RASPBERRY ALMOND BITES
2 large egg whites
150g icing sugar
pink food colouring- optional
70g ground almonds
mascarpone
raspberry jam

Whisk egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually whisk in sugar. Add colouring if used. Fold in ground almonds. Cover 2 baking sheets with baking parchment, using a dab of the mixture to secure corners. Use spoon to make circles about 5cm wide. Leave for about 10 minutes until a skin starts to form.
Heat oven to 180C/160Cfan. Place baking sheets in oven leaving door ajar to allow steam to escape and cook for 20 mins until just crisp. ( I forgot to leave oven ajar and my oven would keep peeping anyway!and they
were OK.) Leave to cool. Ease off the paper. Spread half the biscuits with jam and the other half with the mascarpone and sandwich together.

OATY SODA BREAD

I was in Geant Casino yesterday and was looking at their fresh cakes. As I do not like creme patisserie, I was looking at the list of ingredients to see if they did contain some apart from the ordinary cream. I was horrified by the number of ingredients, a lot of which I had never heard of. They seemed very simple cakes!! It reminded me of one time my son was here and brought some packets of tortillas with him not knowing you can buy them here. They are just a form of flat bread and I was looking at the list of ingredients wondering if they were easy to make and again, I was horrified at all the e-numbers and countless unknown additives. So I decided to post a recipe for some soda bread. Since I found this recipe, I have regularly made it as I find it is delicious, good for you, and unlike a lot of Irish soda breads, keeps quite well for a few days. And no e-numbers or additives!!

OATY SODA BREAD

100g porridge oats
250ml water
30g butter
300g wholemeal flour (I use flour with seeds)
1.5 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
.75 level tsp salt
1.5 level tbsp brown sugar
100ml yoghurt/fromage frais

Bring oats, water and butter to the boil and leave to cool. In a bowl mix the rest of the ingredients. Add the oats and mix well, adding more water if necessary to obtain a dropping consistency. Grease a 18-20cm square tin and line the base with baking parchment. Add mixture , cover with foil and bake at 200 degrees for 45minutes, removing foil after 30 minutes.

A GOOD RECIPE FOR COURGETTES

After all my good intentions starting my blog entries again, I find it has been more than 2 weeks since my last post, I have had a lot of problems the last couple of days being able to access my blog.

A massive hail storm last week played havoc in my vegetable garden. The leaves of the chard, rhubarb, squash, melon and haricot beans have been shredded. Most of the skins of the tomatoes, butternuts, melons and cougettes have been damaged which means they will gradually rot and insects etc get in the damaged areas and nibble away! In desperation to save my 4 melons and 4 butternuts, I have painted the damaged bits of skin with clear nail varnish to keep the pests out. I have no idea if it will work!

I still have loads of courgettes from my 2 plants if a bit damaged and I dug out this recipe from a Good Housekeeping vegetarian cookbook I have had for years. I have made this recipe loads of times before but when it's been a while since I made it, its always a nice surprise how good it is, especially the sauce, which I could just eat by the spoonful!!

LASAGNETTE WITH COURGETTES AND SUN-DRIED TOMATOES Serves 4

250g dried lasagnette/tagliatelli/linguini
6 small thin courgettes
1 tbsp olive oil
8 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, cut into strips
zest of 1 lemon
6 large basil leaves shredded

SAUCE
50g sun-dried tomatoes in oil
1 tomato
2 crushed garlic cloves
50g pine nuts
50g freshly grated parmesan
2 tbsp olive oil
juice 1 lemon
2 tsp grated horseradish (I use creamed horseradish from a jar, Aldi sell it)
1-2 tsp soft brown sugar
2 tbsp water

Pare the courgettes into long ribbons using a swivel vegetable peeler. To make the sauce, drain the sun-dried tomatos reserving 2 tbsp of the oil. Place in a blender or food processor with the fresh tomato and garlic and work to a puree. Add the remaining ingredients until blended. Season to taste.
Cook the chosen pasta until al dente. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a frying pan and quickly stir fry the courgettes in batches for 2-3 minutes until al dente. Remove from heat and add the chopped sun-dried tomatoes and lemon zest.
Drain the pasta well and toss with the cougettes and basil. Serve with the delicious sauce spooned over.

CATCHING UP

After not posting anything for one and a half years, I have been persuaded to resume. Most of my posts will be recipes, which gives me a good excuse to go through my many cookbooks seeking out some old favourites. But hope to find some other topics to write about too!

We went to a BBQ at friends Isabel and Brians on Sunday, good company, good food and good weather, a winning combination. I took along a dessert which seemed to be popular so am making the recipe for that my 1st post. It came from the July issue of Good Food but I tweaked it a bit. The original used blueberries but as I have loads in the garden right now, I used raspberries.

ICED RASPBERRY & LIME CHEESECAKE
Serves at least 12

3 limes
50g caster sugar
250g raspberries
FOR THE CHEESECAKE
3 egg whites
140g icing sugar
250g mascarpone
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional-I don't like it!)
300ml double cream
FOR THE BASE
250g box soft amaretti biscuits
50g butter

Line the base of a large cake tin with cling film. Finely grate the rind from limes. Sqeeze the juice and put into pan with sugar. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar then boil until syrupy. Fold in the raspberries and spoon into tin. Whisk egg whites until stiff, then gradually whisk in the icing sugar. Beat the mascarpone with zest and vanilla. Whip the cream until it just holds its shape then fold into marscapone. Fold in meringue using the whisk blades. Spoon into tin, using the back of a spoon to level the top. Break up the amaretti biscuits into crumbs. Melt butter and add to crumbs then spoon over mixture in tin, pressing lighly with your hands. Freeze the cheesecake for at least 4 hours or overnight is better. Transfer the cheesecake to the fridge for 30 mins. Turn out on to a flat serving dish and remove the cling film.

If anybody makes any of my posted recipes, I would love to hear your comments!

A Boozy night out

Des has recently joined a local walking group. Most members are 60ish. Every Thursday afternoon, they meet up at 1.30pm then mostly drive to a nearby village to begin their walk of about 12 km. They always end up at someone's house afterwards for a glass or three!They love it if it someone's birthday, an excuse for an even better celebration. Last week Bernard was celebrating his 60th so they all went there after the walk. Non-walking partners were also invited along for the evening. After a lot of aperitifs and nibbles. all 20 of us sat down at a long table in the huge garage. We had a delicious fondue vigneron (you cook your delicious cubes of beef steak in boiling red wine flavoured with vegetables and herbs- definately my favourite fondue!) Much red wine kept flowing. Later the massive cheese board arrived. Finally a huge,delicious, chocolatey birthday cake appeared and of course champagne to drink with it. It was a great evening with much singing, joking and hilarity.
Although I didn't drink too much, I did suffer with a bad headache the next morning but then I always get one if I eat cheese at night or drink sparkling wine like champagne or cremant late, but I had such a good time I am not complaining!

Membrillo or Quince Jelly

I have been really remiss lately, this is the first post for ages. Sorry, will endeavour to be more productive from now on.

I tasted some membrillo recently for the first time and really liked it. As quinces are really plentiful here in France in autumn, in fact loads of people are trying to give them away to all and sundry, I thought I would try and make some.

I searched the internet for a recipe and eventually chose this one as it wasn't as sweet as a lot. Pushing the mixture through the sieve was hard work, so I helped matters a bit by putting the mixture in my mixer to break it down more before sieving it. Also within minutes of starting to cook the puree with the sugar, it had started to catch on the bottom of the pan. Luckily I had a brand new non stick wok so I finished the cooking in that. I was really pleased with result. it is delicious sliced with cheese, game or pate or just eaten on it's own.

MEMBRILLO

1.5kg Quinces

approx. 750g Sugar per litre of puree

Wash all the fur from the quinces then chop up - there is no need to peel or core them. Just cover with water and simmer until flesh is really soft and collapsing - about 1 hour. Break down a bit more in a mixer before pushing through a sieve with the back of a wooden spoon. Measure the puree, there should be about a litre.

Put the puree into the pan with the appropriate quantity of sugar, bring to the boil and cook gently for about 45 - 60 minutes until the mixture is so thick that drawing a wooden spoon through it, the puree parts and leaves a line at the bottom of the pan. You must stir often as the thicker it gets, the more it can stick and burn.

Either pot in clean sterilised pots or put into a lightly oiled roasting tin. When it is cold, it can be cut up into squares then wrapped in clingfilm. It will store in the fridge for 6 months.

FLOWER STORIES



The public flower displays in our area are always marvellous but this year has been exceptional. The designers seem to have made a big effort to introduce different and unusual plants as well as the more usual ones like pelagoniums and trailing petunias. I took the photos today so it is really at the end of the season, they will all be changed to the autumn displays at the beginning of October, but I think they still look great. These photos were taken at at a small town just a couple of kilometres away from our village. It's population is only about 5500 and yet it is full of displays.


These leads me to a story about flowers when we first lived in France many years ago. At the supermarket which I use a lot, there appeared in the carpark a large marquee. When it had been erected, there then appeared a big banner saying " The chrysanthamums are coming" (This took place about the 22/23 October. I was completely mystified by this and later that evening, told my husband about it but he couldn't come up with any possible explanation. A couple of days later, I found that the marquee was full of hundreds of chrysanthamum plants, all colours and absolutely covered in flowers. They were not expensive and I think I bought a white plant to have indoors. We found out a week later that the 1st of November is a big holiday in France, called Toussaint (allsaints day in UK) and everybody buys the plants to put on their relatives graves on that day. They do not have the plants indoors, especially the white ones as they are put on children's graves.