Rosewater and Mint Fruit Salad

This is a recipe adapted from my friend Jill a la Jill Dupliex (not the same Jill though the mistake is an easy one). Friend Jill is an excellent host and cook, and when she has you round for food you can be sure of dining on 3 (or more) wonderful courses of food. On a recent trip around hers, we ate strawberries in rosewater essence with a chocolate sorbet, and the memory of the dessert lingered.

The original recipe uses rosewater essence and sugar to create a sweetened syrup for the strawberries to bask in. The rosewater isn't directly tasted, but adds an 'Ooh, what is that?' flavor to the fruit which ratchets up their appeal. So so far so good with the strawberries and rosewater, it would seem. When making it myself, I decided to throw in a couple of more ingredients for a bit of further interest and to use some of the abundant fruit I had bought from the local market (when a bowl full of anything costs £1, it's not hard to wind up with more peaches/peppers/persimmons than modesty would allow).

In this, I used equal parts strawberries and peaches since both turn out a good syrup is allowed to sit in sugar for a while. The rosewater stayed put, and was joined by mint to add additional freshness and flavor. Really, you can play with the fruit and sweetness levels as you see fit, but sticking with a strawberry base and other fruits that are juicy is the best bet. With a bit of cream on top, it's a different way of enjoying strawberries and cream and a slightly sophisticated way of getting your summer fruit salad in. You won't work up a sweat from making this, but you should still enjoy it with a cool glass of Pimms or a dip in the swimming pool (even if it's just an imagined one).


Rosewater and Mint Fruit Salad
makes about 6 modest-sized servings

• about 1lb strawberries, topped and cut in two (or quarters) if large
• about 1lb peaches, diced into bite sized pieces
• handful of fresh mint, chopped finely about
• 3 heaped Tbs confectioner's sugar (more if the strawberries are on the tart side)
• 2 Tbs rosewater essence

1. Combine the strawberries, peaches, mint, sugar and rosewater in a large bowl. Taste for tartness, adjusting as needed but keeping in mind the salad will be a bit sweeter after a while.
2. Stir well and allow to cool for a few hours so the flavors can come together.
3. Enjoy.

Pears Poached in Whiskey

The question I'm most asked by friends now (in a concerned manner) when we're out for a dinner is: do I miss not drinking in my pregnancy? Have I been having anything alcoholic to drink at all? The truth is, I've never been a big drinker and my desire for beer or wine has dropped down to almost nothing these days. So my taste for a tipple has nearly evaporated.

Except for whiskey. Whiskey was one of the first drinks I'd ever tasted; my father would have a tumbler each night and my kind offer to fetch the drink from the kitchen for him was so I could steal a few sips from the top. I confessed this to my mother recently and she refused to accept that a 10 year old would enjoy the taste. Oh but I had, and oh but I do.

To work a bit of whiskey into my diet but in a safe, alcohol-burned-off format, I poached pears in a pot of whiskey along with cinnamon and honey to round off the flavor. The color of the pear was less glorious and deeply jeweled than if I'd poached them in red wine, but it was the taste that I was after. The pears took on a gentle flavor of the poaching liquid, and the liquid itself created a wonderful syrup that when coupled with cream tasted so very good (yet so bad). Before reducing the syrup down, Mr A&N poured a glass of the liquid for me, mixed with a touch of cream, for my own style of white russian. I drank and I supped. The baby seemed content; perhaps my child was developing his own whiskey-palate.


Pears Poached in Whiskey
serves 6

• 6 pears, peeled
• About 6 C of water
• 150ml whiskey
• 1 1/2 sticks cinnamon
• 3-4 Tbs honey
• 2 extra Tbs honey or sugar
• Cream to pour over the top

(This does produce a lot of liquid. The liquid can be scaled down if you have a smaller pot to stand the pears in or if you want to poach the pears in batches)

1. If you are able to stand the pears up in the pot they'll be cooking in, first lop off a bit of their bottom so they can stand up. If the pears need laying down in order to fit, then the bottoms don't need lopping.
2. Combine the water, whiskey, cinnamon and honey in a large pot and bring to a boil.
3. Add the pears and simmer gently for about 20 minutes or until the pears are soft enough for a fork to go into them easily.
4. Remove the pears and set aside to cool slightly.
5. If using the large amount of liquid, spoon out about 3 ladle-fulls of the liquid into a smaller pot, add another 2 Tbs of honey/sugar and set to a vigorous boil. Keep boiling until the liquid is reduced and it turns syrup-y (15-20 minutes).
6. Serve with the syrup and a touch of cream poured over the pears.

Two Kinds of Sorbet

Our trip to France last month was filled with daily doses of dessert (naturally - we were on holiday). At least half the time we went to the effort of having a healthy dessert, and so would have sorbet. The other half of the time...we at like we were on holiday. But back to the sorbet: having it so easily available in so many flavors re-awakened the belief that fruit sorbet is one of the more miraculous sweet things one could hope to eat. Filled with fresh fruit and with little more to mar its healthiness than a sugar syrup, it comes close to being one of the rare non-naughty naughty foods.

It's the right time of year to experiment with making sorbets, given all the fresh fruit on offer and the flavors they might make together. I'm currently having a bit of a love affair with watermelon, and since even I find it a bit of a challenge to work my way through 10 pounds of fruit, it has been given the sorbet treatment. I've also been missing the option of enjoying my Pimms O'Clock when the mood for something refreshing, fruity, and alcoholic overtakes me, so Pimms style sorbet has also been created.

I threw mint into both of them to make them that much more refreshing, and though they were slightly similar in taste the Pimms sorbet also had a bit of lemon and so a bit more tartness. I loved both and have happily convinced myself that I'm getting part of my 5 a day from eating them. I next want to experiment with canned and frozen fruit in the hope of extending the sorbet season beyond just the summer. I'll happily put on an extra woolen sweater in the winter if it means being able to eat such lovely frozen fruitiness.


Watermelon & Mint Sorbet, and Cucumber, Strawberry & Mint Sorbet (AKA, Pimms Sorbet)
each serves 4 dessert portions

Watermelon and Mint

• 125 g sugar
• 125 ml water
• about 2 pounds of watermelon (4 cups when cut up), diced de-seeded
• small handful of fresh mint

Cucumber, Strawberry and Mint

• 125 g sugar
• 125 ml water
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced (about 2 cups when cut up)
• 1 package strawberries, green tops removed
• 1 handful of fresh mint
• juice of half a lemon

Method for both:

1. Dissolve the sugar in the water by heating it over a medium heat. Wait until the sugar is entirely dissolved, resisting the desire to stir but possibly swirling the pot if some of the sugar is being stubborn.
2. Remove the sugar syrup and cool down.
3. Put the fruit and mint leaves into a blender along with the cooled sugar syrup (and lemon juice, if following that recipe).
4. Blend the mixture for at least a minute, until everything is very smooth.
5. Pour into an ice cream maker and churn until frozen and smooth.

Persimmon Chutney

I had a bit of a disaster last night when getting ready to write the day's blog post. It wasn't a culinary disaster (well, at least, that wasn't what was troubling me) but a computer disaster. Reaching for my 4th cup of tea of the evening, I mis-judged the height the laptop screen would re-gain as I leaned back, and...horrible, horrible tea all over the keyboard. Of my new computer. It immediately shut off, and we thought "Oh how clever, an auto shut-off function", which, we've since learned, the computer doesn't have. It's quietly sitting in a corner now, with me trying not to make eye contact with it until we take it to the shop, because I've learned that's how you make computers work again. All my recent food pictures are on the other computer, so I am sharing with you a recipe that was fine if not over-the-top exciting.

We live near a market with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetable options, and where the occasional interestingly-named item crops up. The process goes that I become intrigued, buy it, take it home, look it up on the internet, find it's something fairly mundane/completely bizarre, and try to find an appropriate way to eat it. Last week's purchase was a fruit named 'kaki'.

Kaki, it turns out, is the Latin word and Japanese name for the fruit that is also called a persimmon or Sharon fruit (thank you internet). The name persimmon supposedly comes from the Algonquin name for 'dry fruit', and the tree the persimmon grows from is part of the ebony family. I've always liked the look of the fruit, with its frilly stem on top of the jewel-like glow of the cut flesh.

Persimmon is a very sugary food when ripe, and so I thought of making something savory with it that cut through some of that sweetness. I found a recipe on epicurious for a permisson salsa which sounded lovely for summery months, and which I thought could be tweaked into a warm chutney sauce for colder months like these. It suggested tying together persimmons with lime, ginger, and chili - three fantastic flavors in their own right. We had the chutney with roast chicken, and I used some of the drippings of the roast to add a depth of flavor to the chutney. Not strictly necessary, but I did like how it helped tie tastes together.

I wasn't over-awed by the chutney in the end, in a large part because the persimmons weren't quite ripe enough and so stayed more whole and chalky than I would have expected. I still really like the idea of all those ingredient together, though, and do feel it should 'work'. I would be tempted to try this again keeping the ingredients more or less the same but making sure my fruits were achingly juicy sweet next time.

I'm submitting this to Anna at Paulchen's Food Blog for this week's installment of Weekend Herb Blogging.


Persimmon Chutney

• 4 limes, juiced
• 2 ripe persimmons, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
• 1 small-medium red onion, chopped
• minced chili or 1 small chili, chopped (enough chili to accommodate your taste)
• 1/2 tsp fresh grated ginger
• 1 Tbs fresh chicken drippings plus 1/2 C water, or 1/2 C chicken stock
• glug of dry white wine
• salt and pepper to taste
• (optional: 1 Tbs brown sugar)

1. Combine the lime juice, diced persimmon, onion, chili, ginger, and chicken stock/water in a saucepan, and heat over a medium-low heat.
2. Simmer until the persimmon has reduced down into a mush. Leave it to simmer further if you want it to be less chunky, or simmer less if you like the chunkiness. Take care not to let the mixture dry out. Cooking should take a total of 5-10 minutes.
3. Taste for flavor and balance with salt and pepper.
4. If the chutney is too sour for your taste, add some brown sugar 1 tsp at a time.
5. Remove from heat once it's the consistency you like, and serve warm with meat.

Pick Your Own

On Friday, I went to pick my own fruit (and veg) with my good friend Amanda. We were both very excited for the experience - we live in London and couldn't believe there was somewhere within easy train distance where we could pick (and eat) our fill of fresh goods. We were even happier to be able to go with each other, since we both knew neither of our partners would have been ratcheted up to the same levels of excitement as each other was.

We went to Parkside Farms in Enfield which is easy reach from a couple of train stations, especially if you have bikes with you as we did. It was a lovely, bright summery day and riding our bikes through the (semi-) country lanes made us feel like we were kids on our summer holidays. Our main goal was to get raspberries, and I was happy to gather any other vegetables available. The farm was impressively large, and though there were a fair number of families out we never felt like we were knocking into people and competing for food.

That said, I'm an inherently competitive person and when I was placed in front of the object of my desire (i.e, raspberries) something within me clicked on and I began picking for all I was worth. I felt it was like the soft-fruit equivalent of a fantastic sale at your favorite store: I began grasping everything within my site and felt it very important that I get to the fruit before anyone else could. And yet that sensation brought me great joy, as did the picking itself. The raspberries were so ripe that the slightest caress made them come off in your hand, and I felt proud and protective of them as I gently gathered handfuls before depositing them in my basket.

We spent about an hour picking raspberries (around 1 1/4 kilos each) before moving on to the vegetables. The vegetable picking was less popular than the fruit, but since I was there to gain food for my table (and freezer) popularity didn't matter to me. I was able to fill a large bag of string beans as well as a half dozen courgettes, a bag full of spinach, and a bag full of onions. Scattered around the vegetable fields were raspberry casualties where eager pickers had a slip and lost their hard-picked bounty under their feet.
Both of us had a wonderful day out, being in the country and gathering our own food and cycling down hilly lanes in the breeze. It would be great if Mr. A&N ever decided to join me in a picking session, but I've at least found an enthusiastic picking partner in Amanda.