A passion for fruit (Part 2)

Ok, so at the end of the last post I had gooseberries and blackcurrants to use up.  A friend told me about her Mum's gooseberry flan with German "biscuit pastry" so I thought I'd have a go at that.  The biscuit pastry was made in an entirely different way to any pastry I'd made before, and it used vanilla sugar which I liked the sound of.  You stir the dry ingredients together, add milk, then cut the cold fat onto it and knead together.  Maybe I was doing it wrong but I found the end result a bit dry and crumbly and tricky to roll out.  I did manage to get it into the tin eventually, but some of it went in jigsaw puzzle fashion.  The recipe said to roll out a long sausage and put it around the edges, but it was too dry for this so I just squashed the remains of the pastry into the sides of the tin and blind baked it.  Then I added the gooseberries (stewed with sugar and the juice drained off) and glazed with the juice cooked with a bit more sugar and some cornflour to thicken in a pan.  I finished it with some blanched almonds I happened to have in the cupboard, gently toasted in the oven.

 

I liked the end result, but some family members would have preferred more sugar in the gooseberries, and I'm not sure I'd make the biscuit pastry again, I'll probably use the sweet pastry recipe made in the processor that I'm used to but substitute vanilla sugar.

 

As for the blackcurrants, I had found a recipe on the BBC food website for blackcurrant and mint sorbet.  I had all the ingredients, including plenty of mint growing in the garden and liquid glucose in the cupboard.  I started by making a sugar syrup and steeping a big handful of mint leaves in it.  When it was cool I discarded the mint and cooked the blackcurrants in the syrup with liquid glucose, which stops the formation of too many ice crystals, good for someone like me who doesn't have an ice cream maker.  When soft, the fruit was whizzed in the processor then pushed through a metal sieve to get rid of the pips.  The juice of two lemons was added and the mixture allowed to cool.  Then I froze it in a lunchbox, giving it a mash with a potato masher two or three times over a few hours.  And that was it.  Most refreshing.

Another fruity recipe I've made only this morning was a raspberry variation on a lemon meringue pie.  I thought, just for once and for an experiment, I'd do something I'd never done before and use a pre made pastry case, bought from the supermarket.  I wasn't holding out too much hope, as it's best before date was December (can pastry really keep that long?) and the ingredients list revealed it was made with margarine which I am not a fan of, but to be honest it wasn't that bad.

The raspberry mixture was made by pureeing the raspberries, again using the sieve to de pip them, and mixing with melted butter, sugar, 3 whole eggs and 2 extra yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  I was cursing myself as I tried to separate the eggs and kept getting bits of yolk in the whites reserved for the meringue topping... I put them in the fridge for scrambled egg later.  The raspberry mixture took ages to thicken, I hate recipes that say "cook until thick" without giving you any idea if that will take 45 seconds or 45 minutes!  I made notes for this blog with the other hand while I was stirring it!!  Eventually it did thicken and was poured into the pastry case and cooked for 15 minutes.  This led me to a other downside of the bought pastry case.  Not big enough!!  So I poured the rest of the mixture into a cereal bowl to make a smaller pastry free version (suitable for coeliacs!!) Then the egg whites were whisked with sugar and cream of tartar to make the meringue which was blobbed on top, styled with a palette knife and baked for another ten minutes.  And the end result was a good four and a half out of five, probably would have been a five with home made pastry.  I wonder if anyone else has had warm raspberry meringue pie for breakfast?

 

 

I've just discovered dropbox.  It's one of those things, like the amazon cloud player, that everyone else has probably been using for ages but I've only just found out about.  It makes adding photos to my blog so easy, take with phone or upload from camera and ping! they are on all computers including my netbook so wherever I am, I can find them easily.  Genius.

 

I'm going to Wales on holiday in a few days, so hoping to have some delicious Welsh foodie experiences.  More posts soon.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Caroline :-)