January highlights

Holiday

For the last few days, I’ve been wholly absorbed in planning for a forthcoming five-day trip to Istanbul. I imagine I’ll make it to the Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace, but what I’m really excited about is the food. I’ve even joined Twitter in order to survey expert opinion on the best place for manti, a lamb tortellini of sorts, served in yogurt sauce.

Winter fruit at Maltby Street

Tony Booth’s decision to move his eponymous fruit and veg shop from Borough Market to Maltby Street has added at least 30 minutes to my Saturday morning shopping routine. But damn it if the man doesn’t make it worth it every time. This week there was beautiful Yorkshire forced rhubarb, just over half the price of his Borough competitors. Oranges with flesh the colour of pink grapefruits were 5 for a pound, the Sicilian sanguinello not much more.

Chinese New Year

We celebrated the Lunar New Year last weekend with G’s brother and sister-in-law. There were 14 guests and nearly as many dishes, ranging from wasabi mayo-topped smoked salmon in filo cups to sweet-spicy chicken wings and homemade black sesame ice cream. Little was left of the pomelo salad, but S mixed us up another batch of the tangy, coconuty dressing. (It made an excellent supper when we returned to London, stirred through strips of grilled chicken breast, shredded Savoy cabbage and rice noodles.) And while she claimed that that the turnip cake, apparently an epic labour, was not up to her mother’s standards, chunks of it scrambled with eggs and spring onions at breakfast the next morning was good enough to bring back memories of a similar dish from our Penang food crawl.

Alice Medrich’s cocoa brownies

Had I known that two professional chefs would be attending the gumbo evening for which these were baked, I probably would have tried to find a way out of my hastily-made promise to bring dessert. But not only did these super-moist, fudgy brownies garner praise from all assembled, but I was able to make them in one bowl with the most basic of ingredients and at least half my attention on an unusually good television documentary. Job done.

Best of 2011

Ingredients of the year: corn tortillas and kalamansi limes

Tacos have made it into the bi-weekly dinner repertoire. Fillings vary: there has occasionally been spiced-up leftover brisket or shoulder of lamb, more often some beans. A cabbage salad is a new and popular addition to the table. Whatever the individual components, this is always fun to eat, its quality underpinned by proper tacos (ordinarily from here, though there are some being made in Brixton now too).

Amongst the many foolish things that the European Commission has done is to forbid the importation of these limes, far more intense and aromatic than anything I’ve come across. Bottled concentrates bring back at least some memory of drinking sweet-sour lime sodas across Malaysia, but I remain on the lookout for contraband.

Method: curing

When I lived in France, I would have no more made confit de canard from scratch than I would have baked my own croissants. But measured by an input-output ratio, this delivers an astonishing amount for very little effort: one pan, about 15 minutes of active time and a bonus jar of duck fat at the end.

Most exciting Brixton opening: Lab G

Our local maestro di gelato is a generous soul, a creative genius and a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to his exceptional pistachio and salted caramel flavours. This is the place we take people when we want them to appreciate just how astonishing the Brixton food scene is.

Best meal (London): Pied á Terre

I was lucky enough to eat at this Michelin 2-star twice in 2011. The food was beautiful to look at, and the kitchen is creative while still turning out plates that are hugely enjoyable to eat. The service was a surprise too: well-informed, generous and far from starchy. At lunchtime, it's not even shockingly expensive.

Best meal (everywhere else): Tek Sen

One of the few disappointing moments of our trip to Penang was finding this restaurant closed (some kind of temple festival) when we tried to make a return visit. This was revelatory food: astonishingly fresh yet amazingly complex in flavour. If there’s a single reason why we’re cooking and eating so much more Asian food now, it must lie in the effort to recapture what was on those plates.

Most-used cookbook: Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Easy

We had this out from the library on and off for the last 6 months; our permanent copy should be arriving in time for the beginning of Hanukkah. It’s yielded crispy, spicy chickpeas which are perfect with a G&T, our first proper dhal and introduced us to curry leaves. But the biggest game changer has been making our own chapattis, far simpler and tastier than I would have imagined possible.

Most enjoyable food shop: A & C Co Continental Grocers

I’m spending more time in the local Asian grocery these days, and I still make a trip to Borough Market most weekends. But this is the place that I stop into nearly 6 days a week, whether for some olives or nuts to start off dinner, to top-up store cupboard basics or for the things that no one else sells locally, like quinces or fresh bay leaves. These are the people who’ve held onto my extra keys, make me laugh at the end of a rotten day and are eager to have taste me the new cheese that’s just come in. I don’t think most people have a shop like this; I’m very lucky that I do.

Best experiment: growing tomatoes

Flowers and shrubbery may still hold very limited interest, but I’m now beginning to understand why people like to garden. I’m not sure that in the midst of the root rot saga of August and September, or when I was hauling home 40 litres of potting soil on the bus, that I wholly appreciated how satisfying it could be to grow my own food. But it gave me occasion to talk to my neighbours, and was a far better use of time than more Internet surfing. And I learned that even basic cherry tomatoes taste great when picked as the table is being set for dinner.

October Round-up

Dosa n Chutney

Revisiting our London favourite for dosa and uttapam this weekend, I was relieved to discover that it measured up even post-Malaysia. The chutneys were fantastically fresh and sprightly in the mouth, the rava dosa—extra-lacy and crispy around the edges—was a great new find, and the service was as friendly as ever.

Rowley Leigh's Financial Times column

Intelligent food porn.

Muscat grapes

Oddly, these are a plummy, dusky purple, not green, as muscats are meant to be, but the tiny French grapes at Tony Booth’s greengrocers (formerly at Borough Market, now happily resettled at Maltby Street) are nonetheless delicious. I’m tempted by Amanda Hesser’s recipe for adding them to a foccaccia-like bread dough, and by this suggestion of roasting them with thyme, but that would leave fewer to just eat now.

Jamie Oliver’s new food programme

I know the man became ubiquitous a long time ago, but his new show on British food is both winning and informative. The producers have clearly employed some good researchers—hence the visit to the burger pop-up which was a big hit on Chowhound, and the accurate explanation of fish and chips’ origins with Jewish immigrants to London’s East End. Refreshingly, there’s no preaching, just enormous enthusiasm for British ingredients and recipes new and old. And the food looks damn tasty.

Venison

Advocates for eating more venison like to point out that it’s local, sustainable and low in fat. All true, but I think the best recommendation is the taste. We splurged on some saddle a few weeks back, which we sealed in duck fat then roasted in the oven to a rare pink. Last night we sautéed some onions, leeks and carrots, added bay, thyme, stewing meat and a bottle of brown ale and cooked in a low oven for half the afternoon, throwing in some vacuum-packed chestnuts about an hour before serving. Next up, I think, a ragu.

Brixton

According to no less an authority than the Observer’s Jay Rayner, Brixton Village is the “most exciting, radical venture on the British restaurant scene right now.” And to think I live just three minutes’ walk away.

Whole wheat apple muffins

For years now, I’ve been promising myself to try to bake more often, reasoning that it’s a far better way than reading cookbooks to gain confidence and skills and begin to develop a repertoire. (It also seems like another way to help ensure that I log some miles on the treadmill.) I’m not sure how well the resolve will stick this time, but I enjoyed yesterday’s baking session far more than any I’ve undertaken for a long time. It certainly helped that the outcome was unambiguously good.

These muffins were moist, not too sweet and full of tender apple pieces and gentle autumnal spice. Whole wheat flour is not something I’ve ever used in baked goods before, associating it with the leaden items sold by those virtuous but unappealingly ascetic health food shops. If baking is an infrequent activity at best, I think it’s reasonable that the output boasts limited health benefits. But in this case, the inclusion of whole wheat flour yielded a depth of flavour which I don’t think would have been achievable with white flour alone. And there was enough fat and moisture in this recipe (in the form of butter and buttermilk or yogurt) to make the crumb unusually light.

There’s absolutely nothing in this recipe that needs changing. But it’s such a good muffin template that I can see lots of possibilities for adaptation: adding nuts or raisins; swapping out the apples for grated carrots, pears or plums (slightly reducing the liquid if plums were used), amping up the spice with fresh or dried ginger, including a bit of oatmeal in the batter or topping the muffins with some streusel.

If nothing else, the muffin tin should at least get some play this fall.

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

adapted from King Arthur Flour and Smitten Kitchen

Total time: 40-50 minutes; Active time: 20 minutes

Makes at least 7 muffins in a ¾ cup tin

1 cup (150 grams) whole wheat flour

1 cup (140 grams) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tsp allspice

Generous grating of fresh nutmeg

1/2 cup (113 grams, or ½ a package) salted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar (I used sugar which was lightly scented with a spent vanilla pod)

Scant 1/2 cup (200 grams) Demerara sugar (The original recipe called for American brown sugar, which is not easily available in the UK)

1 large egg

1 cup (250 ml) buttermilk or plain yogurt (I used half yogurt and half whole milk)

2 large apples (I used a mix of Bramley cooking apples and more aromatic eating apples)

Preheat the oven to 450°F (about 230°C). Grease or line muffin cups if tin is not made of silicone.

Core, peel and chop the apples into pieces between the size of a pea and a bean. Mix together all the dry ingredients (flour, leavening agents and spices) and set aside. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until well-mixed. (I did this with just a large spoon.) Add the egg and stir well to combine. Gently add the buttermilk or yogurt. (If you’re a bit zealous and the mixture curdles, don’t worry. It fixes itself in the oven.) Stir through the dry ingredients in several batches, mixing just enough to get any pockets of flour integrated. Fold in the apple chunks.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 400°F (205°C) and bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean. (With my Texas-style muffin tin, this took an additional 20 minutes.)

Allow the muffins to cool slightly, then turn out of the tin to finish cooling. Store covered and at room temperature. The tops can be at least partially recrisped by reheating briefly in a warm oven.

Canning

As a general rule, I’m happy to benefit from other’s kitchen skills when I think they’re better than mine. That goes for jam (more often than not Bon Maman, though I’d happily frequent this fantastic producer in rural Somerset were she closer), chutney (cue the lady in Somerset again, though half of Borough Market seems to be given over to chutney these days), pickles (well, actually cornichons, and I like most French brands except Maille) and ketchup (where Heinz is king). Beyond that, the cost of fresh produce and the severe lack of food storage options in our 55 square metres have provided little incentive to devote effort to improving my canning skills.

Somewhat by accident, though, I have managed to do enough canning in recent months to have filled up nearly a dozen jars, and a fair amount of our free shelf space. First there were the Lake District blackcurrants languishing in the freezer. These have now been macerating in vodka since sometime in early June. I should have my choice of cold, rainy weekends in late October or early November in which to finish turning them into crème de cassis. Next came a bag of windfall pears from a colleague’s garden. I added some Bramley apples, onions, sultanas and spices, and turned them into chutney. Unfortunately, I won’t know if it’s any good until pears are well out of season.

The chutney was a pleasing, if odiferous, way to pass a drizzly Sunday afternoon, with Formula 1 coverage punctuating the plip-plopping of reducing liquid. But the most enjoyable project so far, and the only one I’ve been able to taste, was spiced tomato jam.Although we’ve grown plenty of tomatoes, there was never a large enough volume at one time to make this recipe. But when I saw some slightly overripe plum tomatoes at the farmer’s market for a knockdown price, it seemed a good use for both my remaining jars and (yet another) variable weather day.

I didn’t tinker with the recipe, merely scaled it down to match the quantity of tomatoes I bought, and replaced the portion of white sugar with more brown. As promised, it cooked down in just under three hours to beautiful jam-like consistency. The spices didn’t dominate as they do in a chutney; rather, there was a hum in the background, a bit of complexity. Likewise, the vinegar added gentle acidity without announcing its presence.

It’s in the cupboard right now, though I don’t expect it will take much to get it opened: goats cheese and a baguette, grilled chicken or perhaps just some good cheddar. On the basis of my brief pre-jarring taste, I’m expecting very good things.

Sweet and Savoury Tomato Jam

barely adapted from Jennifer Perillo and Food 52

Makes 1 ½ pints (about 3 jam jars)

Total time: 3 ½ hours; Active time: 30 minutes

I chose to skip the suggested hot water bath, instead merely pouring the jam into hot, sterilised jars. If you plan to jar this for longer-term storage, please follow directions from a reliable source.

3 1/2 pounds tomatoes (make sure they are ripe and flavourful)

1 small onion

2 cups brown sugar

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 cup cider vinegar

juice of 1 lemon

Core and coarsely chop the tomatoes. Finely chop the onion. Add these to a large pot. Add the sugar, salt, spices, vinegar and lemon juice to the pot and combine.

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until thickened to a jam-like consistency, about 3 hours. (The exact time will depend on the amount of water in your tomatoes.)

When the mixture is nearly ready, prepare your jars. Pour in the jam, filling up each jar to within ¼ inch of the top. Seal tightly and turn upside-down until cooled to help seal.

Crème de cassis (Blackcurrant liquor)

At G’s family cottage in the Lake District, there are blackcurrant bushes in the back garden. In anticipating our visit there last summer, I imagined lots of walks, lamb on the fells and on the table, and a bag of fresh-picked berries to take home. Over three days, I managed to get my walking boots suitably muddy, fell asleep to the sound of bleats and dined on local chops. But there weren’t enough berries yet, so I had to make do with a punnet of farm-shop ones.

Upon our return to London, I put them straight in the freezer, plotting a sauce for autumn game or perhaps an apple-tempered crumble. But we tended to eat our birds quite plain, and, having not wholly mastered crumble topping, I didn’t want to waste the blackcurrants on a substandard effort. So they sat until a month or so ago, collecting hoar-frost at the back of the freezer.

Over this time, our supply of Paris-purchased crème de cassis had dwindled and turned a bit stale. In deciding a use for the blackcurrants, I recalled that Amanda Hesser had written about making it from scratch during the year she lived and worked on an estate in Burgundy.

The process, as Hesser explained it, was almost comically simple: Sterilise jars and fill them with fruit. Cover with plain spirit, seal and leave for five or six months. To finish, bring the mixture to a boil, then strain. Add sugar in equal quantity, and boil the two until the sugar dissolves and the mixture turns syrupy and glossy. Pour into a bottle and seal or cork.

I’ve followed the initial instructions, and my vodka-covered blackcurrants are infusing in the cupboard. Come October or November, I’ll finish it off, hopefully making enough syrup to keep me in kir (cassis-enhanced white or red wine, usually drunk as an aperitif) through the winter.

Crème de cassis

adapted from Amanda Hesser’s The Cook and the Gardener

As the method scales to whatever quantity of fruit is available, a proper recipe seems unnecessary. A few instructions, gleaned from Hesser and others:

-Check that you have jars in which the fruit fits quite snugly. You’ll want to leave no more than ½ an inch (1 cm) on the top. Sterilise them in a clean dishwasher or with boiling water.

-For the alcohol, use something neutral in flavour, which is cheap but still potable. In France, one can buy plain eau-de-vie, in effect grain alcohol. I used vodka.

-The instructions for finishing are similar to those used for jellies. In this case, however, the well-strained liquid is boiled for a shorter amount of time. (Hesser suggests that it should coat the back of a spoon after 10 minutes.)

-For easy pouring, the finished product can be stored in a sterilised wine or liquor bottle.

Compote d’Abricots á la Lavande (Apricot and Lavender Compote)

Even a mediocre peach is worth eating out of hand, so too a bowlful of less than perfectly sweet cherries. But an underripe apricot—dry, wooly-textured, with almost a tannic bite—has few redeeming virtues. Despite this, impatience and whiff of honeyed perfume have seduced me more than once, only to discover, once home, that the abricots’ rosy-tinged shoulders are only slightly more tender than my own laptop-wrecked ones.

Were it not for the fact that Michelin-class patisserie is available just down the road, I might have attempted a tart. Jam was likewise eliminated, as I doubt I could improve on that supermarket standard, Bon Maman. After a few days on the counter, by which time the apricots were infinitesimally rosier but no softer, I settled on a lavender-scented compote, courtesy of Clotilde Dusoulier’s Chocolate and Zucchini.

I must confess to being a bit jealous of Clotilde’s fame. But it’s undeniable that her recipes not only work, but tend to offer a creative twist on the simple, market-driven French food I like most. The compote is a perfect example: judiciously used, the lavender adds sophistication and complexity, while an intelligent use of heat (and butter) creates an unctuous glaze for the fruit without turning it into mush.

The recipe suggests serving this alongside butter cookies. I usually have it alone or over yogurt, but it could easily dress up some good vanilla ice cream or buttery cake. And should unsprayed lavender be hard to find, either dried verveine (lemon verbena) or even a bit of fresh thyme might make interesting substitutions.

Compote d’Abricots á la Lavande (adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini)

Serves 2-3

Total time: about 20 minutes: Active time: 10 minutes

1 tbsp unsalted butter

1/8 cup granulated sugar

Small pinch sugar

Just over a pound of apricots, stoned and halved

1 tsp dried unsprayed lavender flowers

Gently melt the butter in a frying pan big enough to fit the apricots in a single layer. Add the sugar and allow to melt without stirring for 3-5 minutes, by which time it should be lightly caramelised. Add the salt and abricots and stir to coat. Cover and cook on a low to medium heat until the fruit is just tender, about 8 minutes.

Remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and set aside. Sprinkle the lavender over the remaining pan juices, turn up the heat to medium-high and cook uncovered until thick and syrupy, about 4 minutes. Lower the heat and return the apricots to the pan, stirring gently to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rhubarbe Deux Fois (Rhubarb Two Times)

One might think, browsing through the (slim) archives of Les Petit Pois, that I never eat dessert. It's not altogether untrue. Here in Paris, unless I've made a special, cross-town outing to Pierre Herme or a similarly-pedigreed pastry shop, I tend to finish a meal with nothing more than a square or two of good chocolate. In London, the situation is similar, if not more pronounced. Though the city is by no means lacking good cake, it's just not something I make any effort to procure.

More disturbing, though, is that homemade desserts don't feature in my kitchen repertory. Although I long ago realized that I lacked the fine motor skills to have any future as a pastry professional, I nonetheless considered myself to be a baker. The products of my oven would be of the homespun variety--rustic fruit tarts, quick breads and cookies--the stuff, I reckoned, that most people really wanted to eat anyway. I would be the one called on to bring desserts to dinner parties, the one whose experiments would be pounced on in the office break room, and the giver of much-appreciated edible gifts.

The reality has been somewhat different. I can blame it in large part on my landladies, neither of whom saw it as a priority to replace broken ovens. And while this situation forced me to become a master of braising, there is not much except for pudding which can be made without that heated box. I also lacked ready and sizeable audiences. A cheesecake, no matter how good, cannot be consumed by two people. There was one period of frenetic baking, during a brief sojourn at my parents' Washington home. But while at least one occupant of the household eagerly devoured my variations on Jewish bakery classics such as rugelach, hamentaschen and coffee cake, my successes in this area were never repeated.

The truth is that I hadn't--and still haven't--found a focus for my ostensible baking energies. For that reason, today's rhubarb recipes--while both worthwhile to make and to eat--are nothing more than compotes. But while I may not be the most credible authority on this matter, having eaten them plain or with Greek yogurt, believe me when I say that they would be delicious with cake, specifically Claudia Roden's much-copied, never-bettered flourless almond and citrus one. For Nigel's compote, use oranges, for Gordon's, lemons. Let me know how it turns out.

* * *
Forced rhubarb--the thinner, fuschia-hued stalk that appears early in the season--is prettier both to look at and to eat. Some even say it has a more delicate flavour--though I've never been able to tell the difference.

Nigel's Rhubarb

adapted from a recipe in The Guardian
Total time: 30 minutes; Active time: 5 minutes

450g rhubarb
a vanilla pod (optional)
the juice of 2 blood oranges and the zest of 1
3 level tbsp brown sugar

Cut the rhubarb into bite-size lengths and place in a non-reactive saucepan. Scrape in the vanilla seeds, if using, adding the spent pod. Finely grate the orange zest and squeeze the juice into the pan. Measure in the sugar and turn the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb collapses under the weight of a spoon. Check the sweetness and serve warm or chilled.


Gordon's Rhubarb

adapted from a recipe in The Times
Total time: 45 minutes, including oven pre-heating; Active time: 5 minutes

500g rhubarb
75g brown sugar
1 lemon
Handful of thyme sprigs

Preheat the oven to 200C. Cut the rhubarb into bite-size pieces, first splitting the stalks lengthwise if they are wider than your finger. Place these in an ovenproof dish and top with sugar. Add a few strips of lemon peel, along with a small squeeze of juice, the thyme leaves, cover with foil and place in the oven. Check after 20 minutes, continue to cook if necessary until the rhubarb is tender but not collapsed. Pour out the juices into a small pan and reduce for a few minutes, or until syrupy.

Reine Claude: The Queen of Plums

When I first moved to England, I was amused to discover that many of the vegetables had been rechristened with more mellifluous French names. But while this clever bit of marketing doesn't extend to fruits, the nation's greengage producers would do well to speak to some branding experts.* Not only is Reine Claude a far more elegant moniker, but these dusky, orb-shaped green fruits are wholly deserving of their pedigree.

First, consider the shortcomings of its competitors. Tiny mirabelles make fabulous jam and eau de vie, but eating them out out of hand requires considerable dexterity and, perhaps, a 35-hour work week. Quetsches (known far more prosaicly as prune plums)--the elongated deep-purple varieties associated with Alsace, Germany and Austria--lack the texture and sweetness required for snacking; they come into their own in dense, nutty tortes like these. The Reine Claude has no such deficits: it is perfectly-sized for snacking and has exceptional natural sweetness. (At 18% pure sugar, it exceeds virtually every other fruit.) Most important, however, is its taste--mild but exquisitely honeyed, its melting flesh exuding a refined, complex perfume.

Unlike most everything else associated with this Parisian summer, the Reine Claude has arrived early at my market. And despite the warnings of pretenders to the throne, I've yet to discover any which are less than extremely good. If the rain keeps up, I plan to sequester myself with a few kilos, half for some resourceful compote-making, the rest for dribbly eating while re-reading some equally addictive novels by Dorothy Sayers, the queen of the murder mystery.


* For the sake of total accuracy, I should note that there appears to be some debate as to whether Reine Claudes, named after the wife of King Francis I (1515-1547), are in fact the original greengage, or merely designate the varietal grown exclusively in southwestern France.

Think Pink!

Think Pink, the Diana Vreeland-esque fashion editor instructs her minions in the opening musical sequence of Funny Face. (Though an unconventional choice, it is probably my favourite Audrey Hepburn movie. What can match the combo of Paris, Fred Astaire and couture? Thanks to Susie Boyt for calling this to mind.) And so, in this instance at least, food follows fashion.

Things began auspiciously last night with a pre-dinner kir. This particular version paired the previous night's indifferent pinot grigio with a teaspoon or so from the beautiful bottle of creme de cassis which I toted back from Paris this summer. Originally designed to disguise the harsh acidity of some southern French white wines, kir is, at least in my kitchen, pressed into service on the (admittedly rare) occasions when there is leftover white wine. (I sometimes also make kirs with the remnants of rough red. The cardinale, so named for the red of the cardinal's coat, is something of a rustic, winter-weather counterpart to the yachts and suntan-evoking kir ordinaire. Its muddy colour, however, is not nearly as lovely as that produced when purpley-pink cassis meets bleached-straw white. As for the more famous royale, it has sadly never featured in my abode.) This raises the question of proportions. In The Cook and the Gardener, Amanda Hesser notes that some Burgundians compose their kirs out of nearly equal measures of wine and liquor. Although I prefer to stick with more austere quantities of cassis, the increasingly beautiful colours do make it difficult to resist shading from a deep salmon pink to light fuchsia and beyond. A taste will convince otherwise. Too much cassis produces something akin to adult Kool-Aid.

Although I didn't know it at the time, the symphony of pink was just beginning. Apres kir, dinner featured stubby, rosy-hued merguez sausages from the Ginger Pig. These were a bit too strong on the chili, but suitably meaty and well-seasoned. The following morning, newspaper read, (pink) grapefruit consumed and a post theme germinating, I discovered that the kitchen held several more useful specimens. The quinces, gently perfuming the corner by the washing machine, could be braised into rosy submission. (Melissa at the Traveler's Lunchbox provided very timely inspiration, cooking whole, unpeeled quinces in a languorous bath of sugar and water.)

The crowning touch came in the form of a box of cranberries. Tonight, I decided, would be the perfect occasion for my abridged, better-late-than-never Thanksgiving dinner. I am not a traditionalist when it comes to food, but proper, simple cranberry sauce--homemade, chunky, not-too-sweet and never, ever from a can--seems difficult to improve upon. At least much. I spent a bit too long looking at sauce and chutney recipes on Epicurious, then, in a rare improvisational mood, came up with this:

12 oz cranberries
finely-grated rind 1/2 orange
heaping 1/2 tsp allspice
several grinds black pepper
1 1/4 cup water, plus the juice of 1/2 orange
just shy of 1/2 cup sugar, a mixture of turbinado and molasses cane sugar
a splash of white wine vinegar (I imagine cider vinegar would work as well)

I combined everything, brought it to a boil and simmered it until thickened, just less than 20 minutes. The result, while certainly not unpleasant, did not altogether vindicate my creative efforts, with the flavours layering rather than harmonising. I'll report if a bit of refrigerator maturation improves matters. In any case, there will be lots of roast chicken, potatoes and parsnips, a bracing endive salad and an award-winning chardonnay from Limoux, none of which, I suspect, will be left for kir tomorrow.