Moreish mayonnaise

Home-made mayonnaise comes in really handy at this time of year. The asparagus will soon be finished, so it's good to make the most of it. Then there's potato salad - those lovely little Jersey Bennes make a really good one - and mayonnaise is great for that too, or for any kind of salmon.
          The classic Julia Child recipe - not the tricky hand-made one, but the one you make in the food processor (she says it works much better than a blender for this) - makes quite a lot, and last week I wanted less, so I just adapted the recipe slightly and it worked fine.

Food processor mayonnaise (after Julia Child)
1 egg and 1 yolk
Process these together in the blender for a minute.

Pinch of dry mustard
1/4 tsp salt
Fresh lemon juice and/or wine vinegar

With the machine running, add the mustard, salt, and 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

1 cup best quality salad oil (you can also use olive oil, but I think a lighter oil tastes better, though it must be fresh, not old. I used canola.)
More salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar as needed

Put the oil in a jug. With the machine running, start adding the oil in a stream of droplets, until you've used half the oil and the mayonnaise is very thick. Thin it out with lemon juice or vinegar, then continue with the oil until the whole cup has gone in. Taste and season carefully with more salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar if required.

The way these very basic ingredients turn into such gloriously thick, glossy, delectable stuff always strikes me as a kind of kitchen magic. Bon appetit!

Essence of strawberries

I wanted to make something special but very simple for a dinner tonight. Harriet Harcourt's blog Fridge Pie has an astonishing recipe for pink peppercorn meringues, lime curd and dried strawberries. I'll make the whole thing one day, but for tonight, all I wanted was the dried strawberries.

           The recipe is really simple, it just takes a little time. Preheat the oven to 100C (or a little lower fan forced - I put mine at 90C). Slice 250g strawberries into thin slices. I used large ones, and got two heart-shaped centre slices and two side bits out of each strawberry. Place a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray and lay out the strawberry slices on it. Sprinkle them with 3 teaspoons of caster sugar. 

Bake for an hour, or until dry. I found it worked best to turn each slice over carefully when the top side was dry, and leave them in for another 10-15 minutes to dry off the other side. 

When they're cool,. lift them off carefully and leave on a rack.






They leave little strawberry ghosts behind on the paper.
         We ate these entirely by themselves, after the cheese, but they'd also be very good alongside strawberry ice-cream, or on top of tarts... They look beautiful and give a burst of pure, intense strawberry flavour. There were three left, so naturally I ate them while I wrote this.

Christmas pudding advisory

On 28 November last year I  wrote about our Christmas and making the pudding, and Deborah commented: "I'm hoping that next year you will put a Public Service Advisory on your blog, telling us it's time to make our puddings, and linking to this post."

          I'm sorry, I didn't think about it until today, but there's still time to make a pudding if you do it soon - it will taste fine, I sometimes didn't get around to making ours until early December.
          But I'm not making one this year. I don't, of course, feel festive anyway, as readers of this and my Elsewoman blog will understand. But in any case there's no need to make a pudding, as I still have the one I made last year sitting in the fridge - we never ate it then.           

           I was a little anxious about whether it would be okay, but I checked it today and it's fine.

So I and the friends joining me in the evening of Christmas Day, in time to watch the Queen's Message, as we've always done, will definitely have it this year. Provided I remember to make sure there's enough brandy, and put it on in time to steam for two hours.... 

        And we'll raise a toast to Harvey (it won't be the first that day) before we eat it. 

Strawberries and salted lemons

My friend Jane P. brought me this clever strawberry huller from New York, and it works brilliantly. Last Saturday I hulled a whole lot of luscious little red critters ready to cut in half and steep in bitter orange liqueur for dessert.

But three of them - one each - were enormous, and deserved a different fate. I'd already taken their stalks out, so I couldn't easily dip their pointy ends in melted chocolate. Instead I used the chocolate to fill the holes in their tops. Not only do they look good, but you get more chocolate this way.

This week called for sterner stuff. Today I went to a friend's for lunch (my boursin with her French bread, a lovely light orange and chicken salad, strawberries, and her firmish, superbly chewy/melty brownies), to get our strength up for the afternoon's task: preserving lemons.

      I'm very keen on preserved lemons, but they're very expensive to buy, and often the bought ones have vinegar added, which is not good. They're one of the few preserves I'm happy to make. All you do is:

- Collect jars with lids - the mouths should be wide enough to push in a whole smallish lemon, and you'll want the jars big enough to get in around six lemons each - and put them and their lids through a hot dishwash cycle while you prepare the lemons. Make sure to keep the jars and lids matched.

- Get hold of enough smallish, firm, evenly yellow lemons (our Karori New World had really good ones this week, but they're even better fresh from the tree, if you've got one - mine is bravely struggling to survive).

- Either collect enough big juicy easy-to-squeeze lemons for juice to fill your jars, or cheat (as we did) and buy freshly squeezed lemon juice by the litre.

- Have ready about half a cup of salt for each jar, and enough olive oil to put a very thin layer over the top of each jar.

- Take off the stems and stem ends and cut the lemons almost in half lengthwise through the pointy end, then almost in half again the other way (so you get four quarters, still joined at the stem end)

- Put all the salt in a deep bowl and push each cut lemon into it, so that the salt goes up inside and more or less evenly coats each cut surface.

- Shake out any excess, or scrape it out with a teaspoon. (Of course if you're meant to be on a low-salt diet, you shouldn't make or eat these at all.)

- Push the lemons as tightly as possible into the jars - you can split some up into halves or quarters to fill awkward side gaps.

- Fill the jars carefully with juice, almost to the top. (My friend Ali says that instead, if you're patient, you can leave the jars in the pantry (not the fridge - see second comment below) and within a few days the lemons will have made lots of juice of their own, so then you just need to top the jars up - but we weren't patient.)

- Pour a very thin layer of olive oil over the top of each jar.

- Wipe the rims to get rid of salt, put the lids on, and tighten them.

- Leave the jars for at least four weeks. Once they've been opened, store them in the fridge.

- Eat the lemon skins (you're supposed to discard the flesh, but I often don't bother, I just eat that too) with grilled chicken, steak, chops, or fish, or use in salads. The salty lemony oily juice is delicious used sparingly in salad dressings or Middle Eastern stews or couscous. 

     Some recipes say you can use brine instead of juice, but this doesn't really work, they don't taste nearly as good. Our jars didn't look beautiful because the lemon juice was cloudy, not clear, and we weren't aiming for A & P prize quality, but I'm sure they'll taste fine.  

Nourishing scraps

We used to have a running joke about the lady of the manor descending on the poor with a basket of nourishing scraps. Much of the election hype has felt like that to me - leftover scraps for the poor graciously offered from the groaning tables of the rich, with gratitude expected in return.

            Tomorrow night I'll be having a few like-minded friends round, all of then guaranteed to be glued to the election results as I will be, and Harvey always was. I'll give them a hearty soup, I think, then nourishing scraps of cheese and fruit to nibble on - something like this:

Later on we might have a repeat of this very good strawberry and mango combo. Or/and the hokey-pokey ice-cream left over in my freezer from feeding Emily and Rachel, the two gorgeous young Englishwomen who stayed here last week...

A few chocolatey bits from my hidden stores (hidden from me, not from visitors) could be a good idea too - just to keep us going through what's bound to be a gruelling night.

Kedgeree, meet risotto

 This week I wanted a light dinner. I'd found some good smoked fish, and often I make kedgeree, but this time I thought I'd create a risotto with it instead, because there was some very good fish stock in the freezer.

          The recipe was much the same as for the ham and cheese risotto I made last January, not long after Harvey died. I poached the smoked fish gently in the stock before I started the risotto. Then I took out the fish, removed the skin, and flaked it, checking carefully for any stray bones.

           I fried a little chopped bacon first, then added shallots instead of onions, and of course used the fish stock instead of chicken stock. No herbs - finely chopped parsley can go on when it's served - and of course no ham or cheese. When the risotto rice was almost ready, I added the small pieces of fish, pepper, and lemon juice. It was delicious, a good change from kedgeree. Serve it with extra lemon wedges and a  green or tomato salad.

The other bit of culinary excitement this week was the arrival of a parcel from Amazon. I buy very few books online, because I want to keep good local booksellers in business, but I found a hardback 50th anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol.1 - I don't think I've ever used Vol.2) for a very low price. I'm tired of struggling to read my ancient, falling-apart Penguin copy, so I ordered it, and it's gorgeous.
        I also got a very cheap hardback of Judith Jones' memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. She was the Knopf editor who published Julia Child. It's not as good as Julia's own memoir, My Life in France, but well worth reading all the same. For me, food and books are inseparable. They've just put Mastering the Art out as an e-book, but I'd rather have the real thing.

Getting it exactly right

So last night I went to Logan Brown for their bistro dinner ( we paid for that part ourselves, but it's a steal at $39.50 each), before going to the ballet on the tickets I'd won in their competition. Here's the menu.

Entree
Potato Gnocchi with Sorrel Pesto, Asparagus & Chorizo
or
Puy Lentil Cake with Halloumi, Rocket & Red Capsicum Relish
Main
Crispy Skin Gurnard with Sauteed Baby Potatoes, Lemon Spinach & Almond Aioli
or
Braised Lamb Shoulder with Israeli Cous Cous, Green Olives & Fetta
Dessert
Bitter Chocolate Mousse with Rose Strawberry Ice Cream & Honeycomb
or
Orange Blossom Delicious Pudding with Poached Rhubarb & Pistachio Crumble

Between us, Jenn and I covered every possible choice, and of course gave each other tastes of everything, while sipping our complimentary glasses of champagne. If this sounds ridiculously nice, believe me, it was. I had the puy lentil cake, the gurnard and the orange blossom delicious, Jenn had the alternatives. I forgot to get a photo of the entrees before we started to eat them, but here are our two mains and two desserts.

That last photo doesn't capture the beautiful shine and sumptuousness of the chocolate. I could rave on about how it all tasted, but I won't, you'll just have to imagine it. It's enough to say that one of the things I like most about Logan Brown is that everything tastes of itself, but the very best of itself, exactly as it should.

      So then they ordered a taxi to the ballet for us (we finished at 7 and the curtain rose at 7.30), and when we got out and tried to pay, we found it had already been paid for.

       The ballet itself was perfect, the only flaw was that Harvey couldn't see it. Sleeping Beauty is a hoary fairy tale, but they managed to make it both utterly romantic, like scenes out of an old picture book, and yet at the same time fresh and amusing and not taking itself too seriously. Right at the end, the happy couple kiss on the staircase, and immediately after that the two charming cats-in-charge (who have been sparring all night) also kiss, just before the curtain falls. Brilliant.