everyday experiments with food
Our Christmas meal is naturally something of a feast, with bits of preparation happening over several weeks, starting with the marinating with the fruit for the Christmas cake. It has become a bit of a tradition to produce a menu as follows (printed back to back and folded).
…
Simple and worth repeating.
Poached Pears
Beuree Bosc pears poached whole in 1 litre of water and 750g sugar, one split vanilla bean and one cinnamon stick.
Rosemary and Honey Ice Cream
Recipe at Epicurious. Excellent.
Plus
Glace ginger slices from a packet (Buderim of course)
Fresh ginger sliced, caramelised in a pan with sugar and Sevenhill tokay
Tokay sugar with some extra water to make a syrup
Toasted walnuts
Rosemary sprigs
This dessert is a take on a dish by Ashleigh Bareham on Masterchef 2015. The recipe was online but seems to have been taken down, so I’m glad I saved a copy. Here’s my version.
Passionfruit Semi-freddo
Scoop the pulp from 4 passionfruit and strain the pulp. Keep the liquid.
Whip 250ml cream to soft peaks.
Whisk together 110g caster sugar, 2 eggs plus an egg yolk.
Place in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and whisk until the mixture thickens and doubles in size. (I don’t think I’ve managed to achieve this yet…)
Gently fold the mixture into the cream with the passionfruit juice. Pour into moulds and freeze.
Ashleigh made a chocolate mousse with 110g dark chocolate and 3 e.g. whites. I made a chocolate ganache. It was a bit cold when I tried to serve it so it looks lumpy.
Candied Chilli
Boil 110g sugar and 125ml water. Add i red chilli, finely sliced and cook for 2 minutes. Drain.
I served mine with a disc of grated chocolate (next time I’d use hazelnuts with something), blueberry syrup, fresh passionfruit and blueberries, and pieces of pear caramelised with some sugar and tokay.
Quite tasty. Very sweet. If I could just work out the whisking I’d be happy.
I made these the other day with some fruit leftover from Christmas.
2 punnets of redcurrant
2 punnet of blueberries
2 ripe nectarines
These were simmered with some sugar, 2 pieces of orange rind, 1 cinnamon stick, 2 star anise, a few cloves and a splash of brandy and Cointreau.
I strained off the syrup to make mulled wine, then pureed the fruit.
Then I sliced 3 more nectarines and simmered them in the fruit puree.
Really tasty and simple.