Sour 'Green Apple'

I bought this sour green fruit in the Whitechapel Market several weeks ago. I don't know what it is, but it looks like a large green apple with a thick stem, and has a very sour lemony taste when cooked.

From left: Sicilian blood orange, small green citron, unidentified sour green fruit.

Indian Sweets from Brick Lane

Clockwise from top left: almond barfi, plain laddoo, chumchum.

Glorious Spring Sunshine

Came out of yoga class this morning to find that there was this glorious spring sunshine and blue skies. Need to 'carpe diem', get out there and take advantage of the sunshine while it lasts.

By the way, today is the Ides of March.

Life is a bowl of cherries...

Well, this afternoon was, anyway. We went to the Cherry Festival at Brogdale Farm in Kent. Although it has been raining a lot on and off recently, this afternoon while we were having our tour of the fruit orchards it was warm and sunny, so we couldn't have asked for better weather. We got to see and sample lots of different types of cherries (they have nearly 300 different varieties), all of them lovely and ripe and juicy and just picked from the tree, so that even the commercial varieties we tasted were wonderful and sweet. There were small cherries and large cherries, dark ones that were very nearly black, pale red ones and white cherries (the ones with yellow flesh and yellow and red skins, and even one variety that had a purely yellow skin, something that I had never seen before), sour cherries and not so sour (Dukes) which are good for cooking. I had read about Dukes, Montmorency and Bigarreau cherries in cookery books (Jane Grigson's Fruit book one of the main ones), but never actually seen or tasted any apart from the Morello cherries we have grown ourselves recently. Some of my favourites were Turkish Black, a small black variety (this particular one tasted better than some of the other small black varieties I tasted, I'm not sure if it's because some of the others were perhaps a bit overripe and not so sweet because of it), Napoleons (a sweet 'white' cherry), Donnisen's Gelbe, a variety with pure yellow skin, and I loved all of the three commercial varieties that I tasted - Stella, Lapins and Hertford. I think I had a slight preference for the Stella over the Lapins. We bought a punnet of Hertfords to take home. They had several varieties of cherries for sale, but the Hertfords were the only ones of those available that I had tasted on our orchard tour.


Varieties seen and/or tasted:

1. Durona di Vignola - dark red, didn't like this so much
2. di Pistoia - dark red, medium size, tough skin, didn't like this so much
3. Florence - light red with just a bit of yellow, hard skin, not really sweet or sour
4. Techlovicka - small, black, very soft and juicy
5. Donnisens Gelbe KnorpelKirsche - yellow skin, very nice, a favourite X
6. Strawberry Heart - small, light red, pointy end, very nice
7. Badacsonyi Orias - large, hard skin, but juicy and sweet
8. Wellingtons - medium size, dark red, very juicy
9. Magyar Pork - large, medium red color, quite nice
10. Vosenka - small, black, very soft and juicy
11. Alma - small, black, tough skin, I didn't like these
12. Early Buckenhays - very small, very shiny black, looks like a berry, very nice X
13. Pivka - old Czech variety, tasted possibly over-ripe
14. Mai Bigarreau - pale red or red/yellow skin, pale yellow flesh, juicy, not at all sour, one of my favourites, and D's also X
15. Sweetheart - red and yellow skin, small to medium size
16. Hoskin - looks like the major commercial varieities, size a bit smaller
17. Montmorency - small, light red, look like Morellos, maybe not quite as sour
18. Grosse Schwarze Knorpel - did not quite live up to its name; medium size, dark red
19. Techlovicka - medium size, nearly black
20. Centennial - small, red/yellow skin, D loved these, he thought they had loads of flavour X
21. Mramorovona - medium size, very black, possibly overripe but still sweet
22. Mary Jane - medium to large size, looks like the commercial varieties, not too sweet
23. Polstead Black - small and very dark
24. Olympus - large, medium red
25. Norwegian - small to medium size, red/yellow skin
26. Vic - looks like the main commercial varieties
27. Vega - pale red
28. Van - a main commercial variety, large, dark red
29. Amber - red/yellow skin
30. Pointed Black
31. Ironsides - from Midlands, red/yellow skin, not so sweet, but not so sour as Wesson Unknown
32. Mansfield Black - small, black, D liked these, but the one I tasted was too soft and not so tasty X
33. Inspector Lohnes - small, dark, pointy shape, nice, very soft and juicy
34. Black Glory - Kent, heart-shaped, quite dark
35. Wesson Unknown - yellow skin with some red, slightly sour
36. Hooker's Black - small, very dark red, nice flavour
37. Stella - a main commercial variety, self-fertile, large, dark red, dark flesh, juicy, one of my favourites X
38. Lapins - also a commercial variety, not quite as dark as Stella, I thought they weren't quite as sweet, and had a slight preference for Stella over Lapins; these ripened on the tree so probably taste better than ones we may have bought in the supemarkets X
39. Hertford - also a commercial variety, dark red, maybe a bit smaller than Stella and Lapins, maybe a bit darker skin, also juicy and delicious X
40. Napoleon (clone V1009) - red/yellow skin, yellow flesh, quite sweet, both D and I loved these X
41. Turkey Heart - small, black, ripe, not sweet (possibly overripe), tough skin
42. Turkish Black - very small, very black, nice, one of my favourites X
43. Kentish Morello - similar size and colour to the ones from our tree, sour
44. Kent Bigarreau - small, red/yellow skin, not so tasty
45. May Duke - not so dark red, a bit sharp
46. Schattenmorelle - small and light red, like ours were before they were fully ripe (our tree is apparently a Rhenish Schattenmorelle)
47. Morello (EMLA) - similar to the other Morellos, quite acid
48. 2002-143 - small, very black, not sweet, possibly overripe
49. Holovouska - medium size, black, tough skin
50. Werdersche Braune - black color, nice but possibly overripe


After tasting so many different varieties I think we were all cherried out, our taste buds were saturated, and it was hard to tell which variety we preferred over which other any more. We thoroughly enjoyed our day out and look forward to going back again next year. Pictures coming hopefully soon.
29/07/2011 Photos added.

Citron

I bought a citron in Whitechapel Market yesterday. How cool is that!

Usually I look for candied citron before Christmas, to use in cookies and fruitcakes. Here in the UK I can usually only get it in the boxes of Sundora mixed peel, which have a lot of orange and lemon peel and only a smaller amount of citron peel.

I have never come across a raw citron anywhere, although I know they are grown in places like Sicily and Calabria.


I wasn't actually thinking of citron when I bought this green knobbly citrus fruit in the market yesterday. They often seem to have a variety of greenish citrus fruits in the Whitechapel Market. We had bought one, which I think was some type of sweet lemon, a few years ago, but apart from being quite expensive, I don't think it was particularly interesting.

Yesterday quite a few of the stalls had several varieties of greenish citrus fruits, in particular, some small, oval, very smooth-skinned ones, and some larger ones with knobbly skins sort of like the skins of Kaffir limes, except that the fruits were shaped more like large lemons.

I inquired from some of the stall-holders, who said that the small ones were used for juice, while the large knobbly ones had more flavour, and were for eating. So I bought one of each.


When I got them home, it was immediately obvious that the large, knobbly fruit had a very aromatic zest compared to the small smooth-skinned one. When I cut it in half, it had a very thick layer of pith, which is when I thought, 'citron'.

So I was off to the internet and Wikipedia to find out whether citrons were used in Bangladeshi cuisine. Apparently citrons are indeed grown in Bangladesh, and they are eaten raw with rice.

Pictures coming soon.

29/07/2011 Finally I got around to uploading some photos.

Memories of Canada

Unexpectedly caught an old (from 1972) Gordon Lightfoot concert on BBC4 about an hour and a half ago. I just walked into the living room as a music show that D was watching came to an end, and the Gordon Lightfoot concert came on. Wow! That took me back.

I don't consider myself a country music fan, but I've been a Gordon Lightfoot fan probably since the late sixties, and went to at least a couple of his concerts when I was a student in Canada.

Isn't it strange how words you haven't heard or thought about for years and years suddenly come out of your brain sometimes, though - like the words to most of the Gordon Lightfoot songs that I hadn't heard in ages, yet I could still remember almost perfectly. How are they all stored away?

Forever Nigella: Chocolate Raspberry Heart

This is my first ever entry submitted to a blogging challenge, the Forever Nigella challenge started by Sarah of Maison Cupcake.

This month's theme was Seduced by Chocolate, and what could be more appropriate for the month when we celebrate Valentine's Day, than the Chocolate Raspberry Heart recipe from Nigella Lawson's Feast. The recipe can also be found in this Daily Mail Online article from 10/02/2005, called Nigella's Valentine feast, which is an extract from her book.

OK, so my main deviation from the recipe will be immediately obvious - it doesn't look like a heart. I didn't have a heart-shaped baking tin, so I had to make-do with two 9-inch round cake tins instead. Apart from that I followed the recipe faithfully.

I used Green and Black's cocoa powder for the cake, and Green and Black's 72% cooking chocolate for the ganache.



I didn't use a Kitchen Aid either, so I had a little bit of trouble folding the flour evenly into the mixture. I think I am more used to North American methods of mixing layer cake batters, and I often have problems with British instructions.

My sponges came out rather dry, but I blame that on my fan oven, which has been causing me a lot of baking problems recently.



The ganache was just right in consistency - it didn't set too quickly, before you have time to spread it on the cake, nor did it refuse to set after the cake had been iced.



The assembled cake looks very pretty, if I do say so myself, with a lovely glossy chocolate icing. Unlike Ms. Lawson, however, I don't have any young children, so I have to take full responsibility for the icing not being perfectly smooth!





See the Forever Nigella web page for all the other entries and this month's winners.