Recipe of the week from The Spice Cookbook: Pear and Apple Betty

This may not be a very original choice, but I am posting from my parents’ house where I'm spending the weekend. I needed to find a dish my mother could eat. She requested a dessert, but she’s on a low oxalate diet which means she’s not allowed, among other things, to eat citrus zest or anything with orange juice in it, and it seems most of the dessert recipes in the book contain some (this one does too, but in such a small amount that it will be okay to leave it out). It also needed to be something that was fairly quick and easy to assemble, so I chose this.

3 firm ripe fresh pears
3 tart fresh apples

1 cup lightly crumbed corn flakes
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp lemon zest (I will either leave it out or substitute with a dash of lemon juice)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs butter

Wash, pare and slice the fruit. Arrange 1/4 of the slices in a buttered 1 litre (1 quart) baking dish. Combine the remaining ingredients - except the butter - and sprinkle 1/4 of this over the fruit slices. Dot with 1/2 tbs butter. Repeat until you have 4 layers.

Bake at 175°C (350°F) for 60 to 90 minutes or until fruit is tender.

Serve with whipped cream, sour cream or hard sauce*.



*Brandy hard sauce:
We will be having whipped cream with the Betty, but since hard sauce is suggested, I decided to include a recipe.

There are 3 recipes for hard sauce in the book – I have chosen to show the one I would serve to my mother, taking into account that she’s not supposed to eat citrus zest, which is an ingredient in the other two recipes.

2/3 cup (1 1/3 sticks) butter
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar
2 tbs brandy
Ground nutmeg

Mix butter and nutmeg together and add alternating dashes of brandy and sugar, stirring well in between, until all the brandy and sugar has been added. Mix until fluffy and serve over plum puddings or warm fruit desserts. Garnish with additional nutmeg.

--
Edit:



Alterations:
Just looking at the three average apples and three large pears I bought made it clear that using all those fruit would be enough dessert for 8-10 persons, so I cut the recipe down by half. The apples were very tart, like lemons in fact, so that did away with the need for the lemon zest that I wasn’t going to use anyway.
Since the apples were so tart, I used one apple and two pears. If I had been able to get tart yellow apples, which are not as mouth-puckering as green ones, I would have used 1 1/2 of each.

Half the recipe of crumble mix didn’t look like enough, so I made a full recipe, which turned out to be just right. A full recipe of butter was clearly too little, so I used a bit more, perhaps 3-4 tbs.

One problem I had was that the pear slices were almost overcooked when the apple slices were still too hard, so it is necessary to make sure that the fruit are at about the same stage of ripeness.


Review and notes:
Apple Betty is a classic dessert, and for a good reason. It is delicious and a beginner cook would find it difficult to mess up. Making it with the addition of pears is a lovely variation on the classic recipe. The different flavours of the very tart apples and sweet pears I used gave the dessert an extra flavour dimension and ensured that it didn’t become oversweet like it could easily have been with just pears or the with mildly tart cooking apples that are so often used in apple desserts. The fruit flavour was rich and not overly sweet. It was good with whipped cream, would have been better with crème fraiche, and very good with vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream. It is good warm, but better cold.

This turned out to be one of those dishes with recipes that are not only very easy to change with good results, but you actually only need to follow the recipe the first time you make them. I know that the next time I make this (and I will, having got the parental seal of approval) I will not follow a recipe, I will just throw the ingredients together, in the sure knowledge that it will turn out good.

Another time I will:
- cut the fruit into smaller pieces
- not mix the cornflakes into the sugar and other flavourings but sprinkle them separately, as they simply separate from the sugar and if you’re not careful, some layers will have more sugar and some more cornflakes
- use twice as much nutmeg, as I could barely taste it.

I would also like to see how it tastes with demerara or light brown sugar instead of white sugar.

Sample recipe from The Spice Cookbook: Spiced pumpkin casserole

It was only a few years ago that the big orange pumpkins one associates with Halloween started becoming available in Icelandic supermarkets (mostly those of one chain) and only at this time of the year. If I ever do try cooking with pumpkin, I will have to have several recipes at hand, because these things are so big that one looks like it could feed a dozen people.

Servings: 6.

4 cups cooked, mashed, fresh pumpkin
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp orange zest
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Combine all ingredients and turn into a buttered 1 litre (1 quart) casserole. Bake at 175°C (350°F) for 1 hour or until hot and the top is lightly flecked with brown. Serve as a side dish.

Sample recipe from The Spice Cookbook: Malai korma

Have I mentioned I love Indian food? This looks like a fairly authentic recipe for a korma, a type of mild, creamy curry in the North-Indian Mughal style. Kormas can be made with all sorts of meat, and also with potatoes and/or vegetables.

This Wikipedia article has information on the cooking of kormas that I recommend reading before making this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 kg (2 lbs.) lean leg of lamb

Marinade:
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup yogurt

Trim the meat and discard excess fat. Cut into cubes, about 2,5 cm (1 inch). Add onion, ginger, turmeric and yogurt, mix well and refrigerate overnight.

Sauce:
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 cup yogurt
3 tbs butter or margarine
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup blanched almonds
1/2 cup heavy cream, undiluted evaporated milk, or, if you want some South-Indian influence you can use coconut milk
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tsp salt

To cook, sauté chopped onion in 1 tbs of the butter until golden. Add the lamb and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until meat is dry. Add the yogurt and bay leaves and cook another 10 minutes, uncovered, or until meat is dry. Add the water and again cook until the meat is dry. Put the almonds through a food processor, making sure not to mince them very finely - they should be in small pieces rather than powdered (recipe suggests using a food chopper with a medium blade). Add to lamb, followed by the remaining ingredients, and cook slowly for 10-12 minutes. Do not boil or the cream will curdle.

Serve with hot, plain cooked rice.

--

This would have been my choice for the recipe of the week, but I will be visiting my parents over the weekend and my father doesn't like this kind of food, so I am choosing something else. I do have every intention of testing and reviewing this recipe at some point in the future.

Sample recipe from The Spice Cookbook: Baked fillet of haddock with sesame seed crumbs

This book, while it is full of tempting recipes, is unfortunately of the type that assumes that can and packet sizes are the same everywhere and at every time.

This is a fallacy. An envelope of dry yeast is not the same size in Europe as it is in the USA, and the USA envelope sizes may have changed since the book was published (can sizes may have done so too), yet the book is touted in the introduction as a future heirloom. Additionally, there are shortcuts in the book using ingredients that may not be available to everyone, such as onion flakes. This is an annoying, but not insurmountable, problem for a foreign cook using the book four decades after it was first published.

Rant over. Let’s turn back to the recipe. Sesame seed with fish sounds faintly oriental, except no glazing or exotic spices are involved, just baking under a layer of crumbs.

700 g (1 1/2 lbs.) fillet of haddock
A dash of salt
6 pats of butter or margarine
3 cups soft bread crumbs
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
2 tbs toasted sesame seeds*
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted

*To toast sesame seeds, place them in a shallow baking pan and heat in a preheated oven at about 175°C (350°F) for 20 to 22 minutes, stirring 2-3 times to ensure even toasting.

Cut fish into 6 even-sized pieces and arrange in a buttered 23 cm (9 inch) square baking pan. Rub a dash of salt lightly over each piece and dot each with a pat of butter.

Combine the remaining ingredients and cover the fish lightly with the mixture. Bake at 175°C (350°F) for 25-30 minutes or until bread crumbs are browned. Serve hot.

Sample recipe from The Spice Cookbook: Old-fashioned coriander cookies

I am used to coriander as a spice for soups, eggs, meat and vegetable dishes, but definitely not in baking, so this seems an interesting recipe.

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
5 tsp ground coriander seed
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour milk

Cream together shortening, salt, baking soda and coriander. Add the sugar gradually. Beat in the egg. Add flour and milk in small dozes, alternating each until everything is used up. Mix well.
drop dollops of dough from a teaspoon onto a greased cookie sheet, about 5 cm apart. Try to keep the blobs round and equally sized. Bake at 190°C (375°F) for 15 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Cool on a wire rack.
Store in an airtight container.

Sample recipe from The Spice Cookbook: Saffron-lemon tea bread

There are so many mouthwatering recipes in this book that it is going to be hard to narrow my choices down.

I have used saffron to flavour rice, in paellas and most recently in mashed potatoes, but never in baking. This looks like an interesting recipe.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 tsp soda
1/8 tsp saffron, powdered
2 tsp lemon zest
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs (large)
3/4 cup water
2 tbs fresh lemon juice

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, mix shortening, baking soda, saffron and lemon zest. Add sugar, a little at a time, stirring well to mix. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mix water and lemon juice and add gradually to the batter, alternating with the flour mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Beat batter for 30 seconds after all the ingredients are in.

Pour batter into a well greased loaf pan, 23 by 13 by 7 cm (9 by 5 by 3 inches) and bake for 1 hour at 175°C (350° F). Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

Serve with softened cream cheese or butter for spreading.

Cookbook of the week #11: The Spice Cookbook

Since I just finished reading Spice: The history of a temptation by Jack Turner, I decided to review one of the three spice cookbooks in my collection. I chose the one I find the most interesting. I came across it at the charity shop where I have acquired many of my books, and knew I had to have it. It was published in 1964 and the authors are Lillie Stuckey and Avanelle Day. The illustrations are by Jo Spier. The book appears to have become collectible, but I doubt my copy would fetch a high price, since the dust cover is missing and there are food stains on the cover. The image below is of the title page and will give you an idea of the wonderful and quirky artwork scattered throughout the book.



This is one of those big, ambitious cookbooks that make one wonder if it is meant for the kitchen or to be kept on a lectern somewhere to have recipes copied from for use. It doesn’t help that it is necessary to turn a page to finish reading some of the recipes, which is always a disadvantage with cookbooks since it causes stains and eventual tattering of pages with much-used recipes. The book is in a large format and weighs a whooping 1600 grams (over 3 lbs.). I certainly can’t see myself standing by the stove, stirring a sauce with one hand and holding the book in the other.

As we know, few recipes are totally free of some sort of added flavouring (imagine such a recipe, free even of salt – a terrible thought, isn’t it?), and many recipes feature at least one herb or spice, but this book seems to be an attempt to give examples of the typical use of spices and herbs in recipes from around the world. There are also short chapters outlining the history of the spice trade, profiling the spices and herbs featured in the book, one on how to cook with spices, a spice and herb chart outlining the sorts of food the spice/herb is good in, followed by over 1400 recipes for all sorts of foods from entrées to desserts. Since I am one of those people who get hungry from reading cookbooks, I really don’t think it would be good for my waist-line to read the book from cover to cover, so I intend to skim over it, stopping to read recipes that sound interesting, and choose a few at random to give as samples. I only wish I could show some more of the wonderful artwork that decorates the book, but I think it’s still copyrighted.