plum and apple porridgy crumble

We had some plums going scrotal in the fruit bowl, so I cut them in to quarters and destoned them, and put them in an ovenproof dish. They didn’t look enough, somehow, so I got a Bramley out of the fridge and peeled and chopped it, and into the dish it went.

Added a drizzle of honey (I much prefer fruit cooked with honey to sugar), a couple of star anise, a decent grating of fresh ginger, and about 1/2″ of water, and zapped it in the microwave for 4 minutes to kick start the cooking.

Made a crumble topping of 6oz plain flour, 2oz porridge oats, 3oz demerara sugar and 3.5oz of margarine, blitzed to crumbs in the Magimix. Patted it down on top oF the fruit, and baked at gas 4 for 45 minutes.

Needless to say, I got all the bits of star anise in my portion, but it was worth it. Trust me.

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supper with friends

We’re frantically busy at the moment, what with house reorganisation, lots of work, and kittens to attend to. The latter had us inviting four friends round for supper and a KittinFest on Saturday.

I didn’t really have time for an elaborate meal, and I knew there was a stack of pork steaks in the freezer, and pears in the fruit bowl that needed eating up, so here’s what we had:

Pork and leeks in cider and cream

Chop up some pork steaks into bite sized pieces, and brown them in a large frying pan (one that has a lid is what you need),  some olive oil and butter.  Set aside, deglaze the pan with a bit of cider and pour that in with the pork.  Add more oil, and sauté as much leek as you like.  Put the pork back in, with more cider, add some chopped sage, and season.  Put a lid on, and cook over a low heat for about 1 hour.

Then fish out all the bits, and bubble the cider right down until there’s not much liquid left.  I actually added more cider, because it didn’t taste quite apple-y enough.  Then bung in a carton of double cream, and return the meat and leeks to the pan.  This can then be heated up when your guests arrive.  Served with sauté potatoes, and carrots, cauliflower and broccoli gently steamed.

Pear and chocolate crumble with  a hazelnut topping

Peel, core and slice up pears.  I added a couple of apples too, because I didn’t have quite enough pears (I found one later in the kittens’ toy basket, which was slightly surreal).  Add a little grated fresh ginger, a tablespoon of water, and a generous, but not ridiculous, scattering of good quality chocolate chips (I get mine from Costco).  Make a crumble topping of 7 oz flour + 1 oz hazelnuts, 4 oz marge or butter, and 4 oz of sugar (whatever you like - I did a mix of soft dark brown and caster, as that’s what came first to hand.

Put the fruit in an ovenproof dish, cover with the crumble topping, bake at gas 5 for about 45 minutes.  Serve with double cream.

Nice quick supper for friends - not showy, but they ate it all :)

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kiwi fruit and apple crumble

using up: kiwi fruit, windfall apples

The veg box from the week before last (!) included four kiwi fruit.  Neither P nor I are enamoured of these little hairy chaps, and the only things people suggested we do with them were pavlova (Pete doesn’t like meringue) or cheesecake, which I couldn’t be bothered to make.

We still had a fair few windfall apples left, so this is what I did.

Peeled, cored and cut out the worst bruised bits of the windfalls, and put them in a pan with some water, and simmered gently for about five minutes.  I did this because I thought there was too much for one crumble, and I was going to freeze the balance.

P peeled and sliced the green things.  We drained the apple, and put a layer in the crumble dish.  There didn’t seem to be a lot of apple left at that point, so we added the rest (none to freeze).  I grated some fresh ginger over the top, and added a drizzle of honey, then we piled on the kiwi fruit.

Then a crumble mix: 6oz plain flour, 3oz brown sugar, 3oz butter, and about 1oz of hazelnuts went into the Magimix.  Whizzed it to breadcrumb texture, put it on top of the fruit, then into the oven at gas 4 for about 45 minutes.

It was … OK. We ate it, and we will finish the rest.  But we still don’t really like kiwi fruit.

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plum (and pear) crumble

Using up: plums and a pear

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re not good with fruit.  we buy it, and are full of good intentions, but somehow we don’t actually *eat* it when we should.  So there was a punnet of six lovely golden plums sat by the fruit bowl, *looking* at me.  And a lone pear.

I cut the plums in half and removed their stones, and cut the pears into eighths; I’m afraid peeling wasn’t on the agenda.  I put the fruit in an ovenproof dish with about a tablespoon of water, then zapped it in the microwave for 2.5 minutes to start it cooking.  Then I added quite a bit of fresh grated ginger.

Crumble is easy - 2 parts flour (or equivalent*) to 1 part fat and 1 part sugar.  On this occasion, I used 5 oz of flour and 1 of walnuts, and whizzed it in the food processor with the butter, then added the sugar.  Put it on the fruit, pat it down, cook at gas mark 4 for about 40 minutes.  We ate it with good vanilla ice cream.

*Other things to substitute for some flour are porridge oats, or ground walnuts.

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rhubarb crumble

As always, bits of this are fairly random.  Serves 4 if they’re not overly greedy.

Take 3 good sticks of rhubarb, clean, trim, and chop into chunks.  I do mine in different sizes so you get a different texture when it’s cooked.  Some might say this was accidental, but it’s not.  No really.

Put into an ovenproof dish, and add a couple of dessertspoonsfull of elderflower cordial.  Or a bit more - I just went sloosh.  Sprinkle with some golden granulated sugar - probably the same sort of quantity, but we don’t like stuff too sweet.

In a food processor,  put:

150g plain flour
100g porridge oats
100g butter
100g soft brown sugar

Blitz until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Keep an eye on it, but don’t worry if it goes a bit lumpy; you can always recrumble it with your fingers.

Spread this over the rhubarb, put in a pre-heated oven at gas 4 / 180C for about 45 minutes.  Best eaten warm, ideally (in our view) with good vanilla ice cream.

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