fruit » Kavey Eats

Mad about Alphonso Mangoes

03 Apr 2013 10 Responses »

Apr 032013

I adore alphonso mangoes.

I’ve loved them as long as I can remember and they come right at the top of my (very long) list of favourite foods. Some people suggest that all mangoes are equal but that’s definitely not the case. This king of mangoes has a heady perfume and sweet, intense flavour that is hard to match.

Mangoes originated on the Indian subcontinent and in my opinion, the varieties from this region are still the best.

Alphonso mangoes, known as haphoos in India, are to those fat red and green simulacrums that grace supermarket shelves all year round what the sun is to a 30 watt light bulb.

Alphonsos put those Tommy Atkin pretenders to shame and I hardly consider them to be the same fruit at all!

Only in season for a couple of months, the alphonso is grown in Western India and also in Pakistan, where it is considered one of the best of the many mango cultivars. Indeed, the mango is the national fruit (who knew such a thing existed?!) of both countries.

Why the European name for this very Asian variety? The alphonso mango is named for Afonso De Albuquerque, a nobleman and Admiral who was the second governor of Portuguese colonial empire in India. Portuguese missionaries may have introduced the technique of grafting to India; certainly they were instrumental in using grafting to create new cultivars such as the alphonso and many others. The new and superior cultivar soon spread to other regions of India.

Of course, there is strong competition from other honey mangoes (the catch all name used to market Pakistani mangoes but which sometimes refers to Indian ones too). If I’m honest, I’m just as happy with a box of kesar, chaunsa, dusehri or langra mangoes as with my alphonsos! There are many more than these, but not readily available in the UK.

When I was a kid, honey mangoes were a little harder to find in the UK, though our local cash and carry and a few Asian grocers stocked them, in season. Nowadays, not only do all the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi grocers carry them, you can also find them in many local fruit and veg shops, in Chinese supermarkets and even your regular supermarket chains.

The start of the mango season is much celebrated in India, and often makes the headlines. Prices are widely discussed, boxes are sent to family, friends and colleagues and online delivery services do a roaring trade. Mango fans gorge on their favourite fruit, buying plenty to eat at home, enjoying freshly squeezed juice from street vendors and attending mango celebration events.

In the UK, the season is more quietly anticipated though greeted with no less glee by those in the know.

For those who’ve never enjoyed an alphonso mango (or any of the sister honey mango varieties) do make sure it’s the one new treat you try this year. You will surely fall as deeply in love with them as me.

This was written as a guest post last year for MADD, purveyors of mango drinks and sweet treats, at Rupert Street, Soho. My favourites from their menu include the mango and passionfruit smoothie, the sticky coconut rice and fresh mango and the pistachio almond mousse cake.

Kavey’s Apple, Date & Ginger Chutney

27 Jan 2013 10 Responses »

Jan 272013

The two apple trees on our allotment gave us a whopping 55 kilos of apples this year; 34 kilos of cookers and 22 kilos of eating apples. And that’s just what we picked – we left some cookers on the tree for our plot neighbour to enjoy.

Some of them we processed at the time, making several variations of apple jelly. Some we made into apple pie. Some we peeled, prepped and froze in large bagfuls. But the majority were carefully washed, individually wrapped and then boxed according to grade – perfect, slightly blemished and those to use first… a labour of love by Pete.

Since then, they’ve been sat in their polystyrene boxes in the garden shed waiting to be used.

I’m conscious that we really need to use and process the rest, so a large batch of chutney seemed to be a good option.

As I had some fabulous dates leftover from Christmas, I decided to use these too. A web search revealed so many different recipes with such vastly differing ratios of apple, dried fruits, vinegar and sugar that I gave up on following any of them and created my own recipe according to the amounts of apples and dates I had to hand, and sugar and vinegar to my own taste. Ginger powder and chilli powder added a kick and additional depth of flavour.

I allowed my apples to cook down until they were really soft but if you prefer them more solid, you may need to reduce the amount of vinegar and sugar you add.

Kavey’s Apple, Date & Ginger Chutney

Makes approximately 4.5 kilos chutney

Ingredients
2.5 – 3 kilos cooking apples (unpeeled weight)
500 grams of super soft dates (weight including stones)
500 grams onions (unpeeled weight)
350 grams muscovado sugar
650 grams granulated or caster sugar
600 ml malt vinegar
3 heaped teaspoons ginger powder
1 teaspoon of extra hot chilli powder
1 tablespoon salt

Note: My apples weighed 3.1 kilos before peeling, coring and dicing but many of them were unusually small, and some had a little spoilage, so the weight loss during preparation was higher than usual. I’d estimate that I used the equivalent of about 2.5 kilos of regularly sized cooking apples in good condition.

Note: My chilli powder is some of the hottest I’ve come across. Mix in, taste and add enough to give a warming kick.

Method

Stone and roughly chop dates.
Peel and dice onions.
Peel, core and chop apples into a large pan of cold water. Drain well just before cooking.

Measure all ingredients into a large saucepan or stock pot and mix well. Cook on a medium heat until apples soften and liquid thickens.

Transfer the hot finished chutney into hot sterilised jars (I sterilise mine in the oven and boil the lids on the stove top) and seal.

Leave to mature for at least 3 months.

January BSFIC: Dried Fruit & Nuts

01 Jan 2013 12 Responses »

Jan 012013

Happy New Year!

It’s January and I’m sure we can’t be the only household with leftover dried fruit and nuts from the Christmas snack bowls?

So this year’s first Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream challenge is to incorporate one or both into an ice cream, sorbet, semi-freddo, slushy or spoom.

Dates by Howard Walfish, Nuts by Iain Buchanan, creative commons license via Flickr

As usual, I’ve been bookmarking some ideas over on my BSFIC Pinterest board.

How To Take Part In BSFIC

Create and blog a recipe that fits the challenge by the 28th of the month.
In your post, mention and link to this Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream post.
In your post, include the Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream badge.
Email me (by the 28th of the month) with your first name or nickname (as you prefer), the link to your post and an image for my roundup, sized to no larger than 500 pixels on the longest side.

You are welcome to submit your post to as many blogger challenge events as you like.

If the recipe is not your own, please be aware of copyright issues. Please email me if you would like to discuss this.

If you like, please tweet about your post using#BSFIC. I’ll retweet any I see.

P.S. The round up for December’s boozy delights will be up in a couple of days!

Exotic Fruits And A Nut!

24 Sep 2012 7 Responses »

Sep 242012

Throughout the summer I enjoyed lots and lots and lots of wonderful fruit. Some are fruits I have long known and loved, but there have been a few new ones too.

Flat Peaches & Nectarines

Also known as flat peaches, doughnut peaches, saturn peaches and even UFO peaches these disk-like fruit are, at their best, incredibly sweet and juicy. I’ve been enjoying them for years, when I could get them.

This year a small local newsagent-cum-grocer’s sold Valencian ones for several weeks, a much longer season than I’ve seen before, so I really gorged myself. They have a pale, very intensely flavoured flesh. One week they were absolutely enormous in size, but the rest of the time, they’ve been much of a muchness.

One week, I came across flat nectarines, which was a first, though they were slightly past their best when I bought them, they tasted the same as their fuzzy-downed siblings.

Lychees

I’ve always loved lychees, though Pete still insists they feel like eyeballs and smell like old lady perfume!

A local Turkish shop got some particularly great ones in this summer – big and sweet and juicy and intensely flavoured. A bag never last long!

Rambutans

I don’t see rambutans on sale very often so I picked this packet up in China Town some weeks ago. The last time I had rambutan was some years ago!

The name derives from the Malay for “hairy”, and you can see why; with their bright red skin and green spines, they look like small hairy aliens! I’ve seen them with red spines too. From the same plant family as lychees, the fruits are somewhat similar in shape and texture, though the taste is a little different and also more subtle.

Fresh Dates

Like many Brits, I adore dried dates with their sticky, chewy texture and toffee-sweet flavour. But I’d never even thought about what a fresh date might look like, let alone tried one. Indeed, when I saw these in my local Turkish shop, I had no idea what they were, and asked one of the staff members. When she told me they were fresh dates and could be eaten as they were, I immediately bought some to try.

They were quite a revelation, with more than a hint of the familiar flavour of their dried counterpart but an altogether different and lighter texture and juiciness. I shall look out for these again!

Indian and Pakistani Mangoes

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t greedily enjoy as many Indian and Pakistani mangoes as I could get my hands on during their season. This year started slowly but I caught up in the end!

Guavas

I love guavas! I have fond memories of visiting family in India and climbing into a guava tree with my cousins.

However, when I’ve found these fruits on sale in the UK in the past, I’ve always been so disappointed. The scent has always been the familiar one, just like the fruit in India, but they haven’t tasted of anything at all.

Having been so happy with the rest of the fruit I’ve bought from the local Turkish shop, I decided to take a chance when I saw these on sale in August. To my delight, the flavour matched the beautiful smell and I was transported…

Prickly Pears

Again, when I saw these on sale in the Turkish shop, I had no idea what they were and had to ask; there are hand written labels tacked to the shelves but seldom near the fruit they belong to.

I took these with me when visiting a friend who is equally excited about trying new things. On cutting into them, we discovered a vivid red flesh packed full of hard knobbly seeds. The seeds were so well distributed in the flesh it was impossible to cut them out, so eating involved sucking the fruit off the seeds and spitting them out. Sadly, it wasn’t worth the trouble. Whilst these were super sweet and juicy, there was no discernable flavour at all other than plain sweet.

Please forgive the awful photo – my mobile phone camera is really not very good.

Fresh Cobnuts

More crappy phone camera photos, sorry!

Cobnuts, a British variety of hazelnut, are enjoying a renaissance, with new orchards being planted and old ones brought back to peak condition. I’ve enjoyed dried and roasted cobnuts before but had never tried freshly harvested ones, still in their green leafy outer coat. They are quite different to the dried ones, with a really juicy crunch and mild flavour. They remind me a lot of water chestnuts and I’m thinking they might work well in a East Asian-inspired curry.

What fruit have you been enjoying this year?

Gooseberry Cobbler: First Attempt!

11 Aug 2012 6 Responses »

Aug 112012

I’ve not really eaten gooseberries much. I’d never had one raw before, and had only rarely tasted them in desserts such as gooseberry fool. And I’d not been too enamoured with them on those occasions.

Pete’s always been a fan, though.

We inherited a few bushes on our allotment, though they didn’t produce any fruit last year. We figured that could be down to a lack of pruning for the last few years, and Pete pruned them hard last autumn. It worked, and this year I picked berries from three bushes, a mix of smooth red dessert ones and hairy green ones.

I tasted a dark red one whilst picking and, whilst I can’t say they’ll become a favourite fruit for me, it was alright!

I’d never prepped or cooked gooseberries before. Goodness, doesn’t topping and tailing them take time?!

And I’d never made a cobbler before either.

This wasn’t a bad first attempt, though there’s room for improvement: Worried the gooseberries were about to catch, I added a tablespoon of water to the pot, but not long after, the berries finally broke down a bit and dumped their liquid, so the finished fruit compote was a bit wet.

Loosely referring to a few different recipes on the web, I estimated the amount of topping according to the volume of fruit. But as we used a pan that allowed them to spread out into a fairly thin layer, we could actually have done with a little more topping. It does expand on cooking, of course, as you can see from the photographs. Scale the compote and topping recipes up or down separately, as you think best.

Gooseberry Cobbler

Ingredients for gooseberry compote

400 grams topped and tailed gooseberries
50 grams caster sugar
0.5 teaspoon powdered ginger

Ingredients for cobbler topping

70 grams plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
15 grams butter
30 grams demerara sugar, divided into 2 equal portions
70 ml buttermilk

Preheat oven to 180 C (fan).
Combine compote ingredients in a pan and cook until berries have broken down and softened a little and sugar is fully dissolved in the juices.

Transfer to a suitable baking dish.

To make the cobbler topping, mix the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Stir in one of the portions of sugar.
Add the buttermilk and mix into a dough. It’ll be pretty soft and sticky.

Gently drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the surface of the compote.

Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the topping.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until the cobbler topping is golden brown.

Serve hot.

Easy Redcurrant & Port Jelly

09 Aug 2012 12 Responses »

Aug 092012

It’s not been a great year for growing, with plants confused by a very early faux-summer followed by months of endless rain and cold. But we did enjoy harvesting summer fruit from our allotment plot in mid July, bringing home tubs of redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries.

I’m not a huge fan of redcurrants but my sister insists on them for Christmas day, so I decided to make her some redcurrant and port jelly for this year’s Christmas feasting.

Easy Redcurrant & Port Jelly

Ingredients

400 grams redcurrants
400 grams sugar (I used half white + half light muscovado, as that’s what I had in stock)
Approximately 20 ml port (added to 250 ml jelly)

Method

Wash redcurrants, taking care not to crush, and drain well. There’s no need to remove the stalks (though I found it therapeutic to do so as I was harvesting them).

Place redcurrants and sugar into a large pan, with a jam thermometer, if you have one.
Bring to the boil on a medium to high heat.
Once the sugar has fully dissolved and the currants start to soften, use a wooden spoon or potato masher to break the currants open and mash them into the liquid.
Boil until the mixture reaches 104 °C.
(If you don’t have a jam thermometer, test for a set by either dropping some jam onto a freezer-chilled plate to see if it sets enough to wrinkle to the touch after a few seconds or by lifting a wooden spoon out of the liquid and seeing whether the drops run together and fall off cleanly, which means it’s not yet reached setting point, or coagulate, form thick triangles, and fall off thickly).

Place a clean muslin cloth into a sieve, over a heat-resistant jug and pour the jam into the cloth.

Allow the liquid to drip through. As I am keener on maximum yield than a crystal clear jelly, I twist and squeeze the cloth to force every last drop of liquid through.
Add port and mix well.

Pour the finished jelly into sterilised jars whilst both the liquid and the jars are still hot, and seal immediately with sterilised lids.

Sheepish postscript: Sister has gently pointed out that I have confused redcurrants and cranberries, it being the latter she always has for Christmas. But she is looking forward to trying my jelly this year anyway! Oops!

Thermomix Review: Guacamole

09 Jul 2012 3 Responses »

Jul 092012

I’ve already posted about the results of my first trials of the Thermomix I’ve been loaned for a couple of months, in this post about basil tagliatelle and ragu bolognese.

Another of the recipes I tried, looking for those where the varied functions of the Thermomix would clearly save me time and effort, was the Fast and Easy Cooking recipe for guacamole.

It worked like a charm, and like the ragu bolognese, I was impressed with the balance of flavours and the even chopping and mixing. The only change I’d make next time is to reduce the oil content further.

Thermomix Guacamole

Ingredients
5 grams fresh coriander
1 chilli, top discarded
70 grams red onion, peeled and quartered
2 ripe avocados, peeled
10 grams lime juice
1 plum tomato, peeled and deseeded
40 grams extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Note: As I’m a wuss, we omitted the chilli. We switched the lime juice to lemon, as that’s what we had to hand. Instead of one plum tomato, we used a handful of baby plums. Our avocadoes were small so we used three. We reduced the oil by 10 grams as 40 grams seemed too much. Next time I’d reduce it to just 15-20 grams.

Method

Weigh the coriander on the lid, then mince the coriander and chilli by dropping onto the running blades at Speed 9.
Turn to speed 5 and finely chop the onion by dropping it onto the running blades.
Add all remaining ingredients (weighing the lime juice and oil as you add it) and mix for just 3-5 seconds at Speed 4, until the tomato is chopped.
Season to taste and serve immediately.

This entire recipe took less than 2 minutes, including the time to peel and quarter the onion and scoop out the avocado flesh.

Whilst guacamole is a very simple recipe that can certainly be made with nothing but a spoon to scoop the avocado, a sharp knife to chop ingredients and a fork to mash and mix, I was impressed by how fast it was using the Thermomix and with just a knife, spoon and the machine’s jug to wash up.

Kavey Eats received a loan machine courtesy of Thermomix. (This is not a sponsored post).

Avocado Ice Cream

17 Jun 2012 26 Responses »

Jun 172012

Where once I might have got most of my inspiration from cookery books, food magazines and even the telly, these days a lot comes from online content. Not just other food blogs (of which I read hundreds and hundreds) but also twitter and, lately, Pinterest.

I was intrigued by the avocado and coconut sorbet my friend Uyen shared in May; she explained that avocado is often used in sweet desserts in Vietnam and that was the first time I ever entertained such an idea. After that, I seemed to spot avocado ice creams everywhere, and pinned this one from The Hill Country Cook blog to try myself.

The avocado tree, native to Central Mexico, is part of the laurel family – as are the trees from which we take cinnamon and camphor – and has a long history of cultivation in central and South America. The fruits, which are actually large berries with a single stone in each, contain soft green flesh which is high in monounsaturated fat.

The word avocado comes from the Spanish aguacate which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word ahuácatl, meaning testicle, in reference to the shape of the fruit. The modern English name of avocado was taken from the Spanish word for advocate, a way of obscuring the meaning of the original Mexican name. Interestingly, in India and parts of China it is referred to as the butter fruit, presumably because of it’s fattiness.

I followed Katie’s recipe almost exactly, though as the avocados I found were small, I used 5 instead of 3.

This is the first time I’ve ever had avocado in a sweet format. Although it’s quite unusual I really, really like the result!

The high fat content of the avocado makes for a wonderfully creamy and smooth ice cream. Although it freezes really hard, dipping the ice cream scoop in a mug of hot water helps carve servings from the tub and it’s instantly smooth in the mouth.

Avocado Ice Cream

Ingredients
5 small avocados
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup double cream
3 cups whole milk
1.5 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Measure out the cream, milk, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice into a blender.

Halve the avocados, remove the stones and scoop flesh out and add it to other ingredients.

Blend until completely smooth.

Pour into an ice cream machine and churn until frozen.
Serve immediately or transfer to the freezer to solidify further.

As you can see, I retained the avocado skins and used them for serving. If you would like to do this, make sure you scrape out every last scrap of flesh and wash thoroughly. Stuff the skins with balls of foil to help them retain their shape as they dry and on the draining board. My skins were washed and dried just after I made the ice cream and I used them as serving bowls two days later.

This is my entry for June’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream. Don’t forget there’s a great prize on offer this month!

Clafoutis: A Black Cherry Pudding

11 Mar 2012 16 Responses »

Mar 112012

I love black cherries and I love stodgy, comforting puddings, so it’s a wonder I’ve not made clafoutis before now!

Clafoutis, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, is a baked French dessert of black cherries in a thick flan-like batter.

Originating in the Limousin region of France, clafoutis traditionally contains un-pitted black cherries, as the pits release additional flavour during cooking. However, these days, recipes for versions using pitted fresh cherries, and even tinned cherries, abound. A similar dessert can be made using many other fruits, from plums and prunes to apples, blackberries and even physalis, though such versions are correctly called flaugnarde, rather than clafoutis.

As I didn’t fancy spending an afternoon pitting cherries, I decided to use tinned black cherries, choosing the kind that are preserved in syrup. I created this recipe by combining elements of several different recipes I found on the web.

Clafoutis: A Black Cherry Pudding

Ingredients
For the cherries
500 grams tinned black cherries in syrup, drained weight
50 ml syrup, reserved from the cherries
50 ml gin, vodka or kirsch
For the batter
30 grams unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
100 grams caster sugar, plus extra for greasing and sprinkling
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
40 grams self-raising flour
50 ml milk
70 ml double cream
pinch salt

Method

Drain the tinned cherries into a bowl, reserving the syrup.

Pour 50 ml of the reserved syrup and 50 ml of your chosen alcohol over the cherries and leave to macerate in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Grease a flan dish with butter and sprinkle with sugar, shaking to distribute the sugar evenly over the butter. Tip out any excess.
Heat the butter gently in a small pan until it turns a very pale brown, known as beurre noisette or hazelnut butter, after its colour. Take care not to let the butter burn, or it will taste bitter.
In a large bowl, whisk the sugar, eggs and vanilla until well combined.

Add the flour and whisk until there are no lumps remaining, then slowly add the milk, cream, salt and browned butter.

Retrieve the cherries and carefully pour the alcoholic juices into the batter, and mix in.

Tip the cherries into the flan dish and spread them out evenly, then pour the batter over them gently.
Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a knife or skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

To finish, sprinkle with caster sugar and serve warm.

I served mine with ready-made chocolate custard, for a black forest gateaux flavour combination.

You can see from my photographs that my clafoutis stuck to the dish! That’s because I completely forgot to grease and sugar the flan dish, despite writing it down in my recipe plan. It should come out more cleanly, if you make sure you include that step.

Baby Tangerines, Preserving Cuteness!

26 Jan 2012 7 Responses »

Jan 262012

When I was sixteen I had my wisdom teeth taken out.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

My best friend’s mum gave me a brown paper bag of clementines as a ‘get well soon’ gesture. They were the tiniest clementines I’d ever seen, little more than an inch in diameter. I loved these adorable miniature citrus fruits and have always bought them whenever I’ve come across them since, which hasn’t been often…

But I looked for them last winter, and again over the last few months, and couldn’t find them anywhere. Worse still, more than one fruit stall vendor looked at me like I was asking for oranges grown on Mars! Occasional sightings by friends (in non-local shops) convinced me I wasn’t going crazy.

Finally, I found these baby tangerines in my local Waitrose and had to put them in my basket. (I didn’t have a choice, they were calling to me, “Eat me, Kavey, eat me!” they squeaked).

I candied them, using the same recipe I first tried for Christmas day, and made again a few days later.

No alcohol this time, just sugar, water and the little oranges. Delicious!

These oranges are so cute, I can’t resist sharing photos, even though I blogged the recipe so recently.

Older Entries

Mad about Alphonso Mangoes

Kavey’s Apple, Date & Ginger Chutney

Kavey’s Apple, Date & Ginger Chutney

January BSFIC: Dried Fruit & Nuts

How To Take Part In BSFIC

Exotic Fruits And A Nut!

Flat Peaches & Nectarines

Lychees

Rambutans

Fresh Dates

Indian and Pakistani Mangoes

Guavas

Prickly Pears

Fresh Cobnuts

Gooseberry Cobbler: First Attempt!

Gooseberry Cobbler

Easy Redcurrant & Port Jelly

Easy Redcurrant & Port Jelly

Thermomix Review: Guacamole

Thermomix Guacamole

Avocado Ice Cream

Avocado Ice Cream

Clafoutis: A Black Cherry Pudding

Baby Tangerines, Preserving Cuteness!

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