Cooking Again: Steak & Kidney, Quinces

Despite the really nice weather, I have begun thinking about winter food - and last night I cooked the first steak and kidney pudding of the season.  It wasn't a great success with the boys - but Mark and I enjoyed it.  It was a very basic one, beginning with frying an onion till soft, removing it, then coating the beef and the kidney in flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, mustard powder and cayenne pepper.  This was browned and removed, then returned to the pan. I added a tin of bitter, a little worcester sauce, another chopped onion, and the original cooked onion.   For the boys' sake I didn't add mushrooms.   Then it cooked for about 90 mins.   I used the rest of the seasoned flour to make the suet crust pastry with.  It was simple, using few fewer ingredients than one would expect from some of the magazine recipies and really delicious.  We ate it with  potatoes, cabbage and carrots.


Today I noticed that some of the quinces in the garden had split, so I decided to pick them and do something with them.   As they are damaged I'll probably use them to make jelly, but I found this recipe below on another blog and am going to keep it here to remind me of something else I could do with quinces (which, predictibly, the boys don't like)

QUINCE/APPLES WITH ROSEMARY AND PINE NUT TOPPING WITH QUINCE/APPLE, RUM AND LIME SAUCE
4 servings

3 small quinces or 3 large cooking or baking apples
1 tblsp chopped rosemary
4-5 tblsp pine nuts
3 + 2-3 tblsp acacia honey
2-4 tblsp rum
The juice of 1 lime
200-400 ml / 0.85-1.7 cups water (it depends on how long it takes to cook the sauce)

Chop the rosemary and pine nuts finely, mix with the honey and leave it to stand.

Peel 1 quince/apple and chop it finely. Put it in a bowl with the lime juice, rum and 2-3 tblsp of honey (it depends on how sweet the quince/apple is). Leave it for a while.
Peel the quinces/apples. Divide them in two lengthwise and remove the core.
Make a sauce by heating the chopped quince/apple mix with small amount of wate until it becomes soft and syrupy. Simmer the quince halves in a separate pan until soft, turn over, add more water if needed.
Fill the centres of the quince/apple halves with the rosemary and pine nut mix, let it cover as much as possible.
Put sauce into an oven-proof tin, and put the quince halves on top.  Put under the grill or in v. hot oven for a few minutes until golden.

Sounds nice.  Good for a dinner party  or something - if I had enough quinces (this is only their second year) and I still have about 14 on the tree (I removed 5 grotty ones).   They are huge - those five weighed a kilo.   They will have to be jelly I think.

Not cooking

I am just not in the mood.  I am uninspired, and I couldn't care less about food.  Last night I went out to the Belgian Bar (belgiancafe.com) in Ramsgate and had some nice fish - Mark had moules frites, and the chips last night were the best chips I have had for a long time... what do they fry them in?  Could it have been arachide?  They had a really different flavour and fantastic texture - more like thrice-cooked chips. 

So much for dieting.   We went out because it seemed like the last chance to sit out on a summer night and eat a meal (I'm not sure if we've done that at all this summer, apart from in our garden).

I am hoping to return to form shortly, as I am planning to have dinner parties again - private ones, as opposed to Food Odyssey ones - although I would gladly have a Food Odyssey party, if there was a demand.   Perhaps in October...