Work for Idle Hands

I made these as a bit of fun for our Guild meeting.
They were quite popular but I think better in look than taste - but then I'm not fond of marsh mallow. Probably more fun with kids for both eating and creating.

Apparently I have not done any stirring up (on this blog at any rate) since 2008 - and rather like that year, it all seems rather early.

A week ago I made some rather splendid cranberry and clementine marmalade - Waitrose 3 for 2 having produced a localised domestic glut of clementines and then to my surprise, Sainburys having fresh cranberries in stock. In fact, I had a recipe for this from a Sainsburys magazine, which I then lost and could not find on line. In principle of course you could use any marmalade recipe but the proportion of sugar is harder to gauge when you vary the the fruit. But... Caroline to the rescue with the recipe on her perfectly splendid blog The Patterned Plate... and delicious it has turned out to be. [Flushed with success I went on to make ginger marmalade - which was yummy though did not taste quite as much of ginger or oranges as I had expected {was driven to stir in whisky} - the main attraction was that it also involved apples - see reference to "apple glut" below...]

This weekend I made my Christmas puddings. In 2008 I claimed I "always" used Jocelyn Dimblebey's recipe - which was true until 2010. In that year we discovered we had a quince tree in France - a bit naive about quinces, we thought they were rather hard pears that never ripened and grew fluffy mould! That same year Alison referred me to Nigella's recipe which involves quinces and I have used it ever since. It is very fruity and also involves marron glacé - yum - which Waitrose staff always irritate me by claiming is unheard of and yet is always in stock! (This year as a variation they tried to press pureed chestnuts on me.)
I also found that Nigel Slater has an online recipe with quinces - and figs which will be ever more perfect if our fig tree ever produces any - so I have also tried that one. Note that in both recipes the quinces can be replaced by grated apple, and like my original favourite pudding they are both made with a base of breadcrumbs. [There was some mixture left over that I made into a tiny "taster" pudding which we ate right away and it was simply delicious - hard to see how the flavours could mature to be even better!]

We also have a glut of apples from the garden here so for the cake of the moment (to eat now) I made my Almond Apple cake - originally from Mary Berry so bound to be good.

This is an unusual recipe which we tried as we have a lot of home-grown cucumbers - and it involves fish, which is very easy for me to find in our very local fishmonger. The dish was unexpectedly delicious - I do not mean I expected it to be horrid (!), but it was quite exceptional. I expected the cucumber to cook like squash and be soft, but it remains crunchy - which may be why you do not often see it cooked.
Yum

Recipe by Nigel Slater featured in the Observer and the photo is by Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer.

Cucumber pie (with salmon and prawns)

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1½ oz firm white bread
• Fresh dill
• grated zest of unwaxed lemon
• a small cucumber
• 5 oz salmon
• 4 oz shelled prawns
• 3½ oz cod
• A few capers*
• 1 oz butter
• 2½ fl oz double cream

* I left these out of my version as I had none easily available and we are not so keen on them anyway.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, or Gas Mark 4.
2. Crumb the bread in a food processor together with a handful of dill and the grated zest of a lemon.
3. Lightly peel the cucumber, remove the seeds, and then chop into chunks.
4. Remove the skin from the salmon and cod (or get the fishmonger to remove them with their much sharper knives!), cut both into large chunks and place the pieces of fish into a shallow baking dish along with the shelled prawns.
5. Tuck the cucumber pieces in between the fish.
6. Sprinkle in the capers if you are using them (see * above).
7. Season with salt and black pepper then add the butter chopped in pieces.
8. Pour over the double cream and then scatter over the dill crumb topping.
9. Bake for 25 minutes.
10. Eat.