Bananas
Banana Mouth - Lois
Magic Banana - Susan Wenger
Bananas With Rum - Roberta Lovatelli
Frozen Sliced Bananas - Jim Biggerstaff
Black Currants - Ginger Johnson
Brandied Fruit - Sarah Scott
Chardwardon
Cherries
Cherry Bounce - Sarah Scott
Cherry-Apricot Compote - Ruth Abrams
Cherry Pitters
The Cherry Pitter Question - Alice Gomez
Answer One - Ruth Abrams
Answer Two - Marian Van Til
Answer Three - Karen von Bargen
Dulce de Mimbre - Mary S.
The Virtues of Fondue - Marian Van Til
Frozen Grapes - Vanessa Brown
Fruit Bars - Lois
Fruyte Fritours
Baked Fruit Tart - Alice Gomez
Fruit Dessert from West End Cafe in New York City - Lois
Plums
Jeffrey Charles Asks...
Marion Burros' Famous Plum Torte, Of Course, From the New York Times - Lois
Plum Brandy - Ruth Abrams
Polish Plum and Rhubarb Soup - Ruth Abrams
Plum Jam (Microwave) - Lois
Microwave Cautions - Linnea
Lois Agrees
Plum Duff
Barry Wainwright
David Charnick Asks...
Barry Replies
Bruce Trinque Adds...
Jessie Strader and the OED
Pomegranates
David Charnick Asks...
Susan Collicot
Helen Connor
Ted Dannemiller
Pragathi Katta
Jennifer Klein
Lois
Strawberry Shortcake - Mary S.
Strawberry Cheesecake Blintzes - Alice Gomez
Zapallo en Almíbar - Satyam
Bananas
Banana Mouth - Lois
Take a banana, put knife to bottom (end away from stem). Slice into bottom upwards towards top about 1/2 inch. Pull edges apart a little: a mouth.
Magic Banana - Susan Wenger
A wonderful April Fools joke to play on children (or adults):
Take a banana. Shove a needle through it (through the skin) and wiggle it back and forth until the innards are sliced all the way through. Pull out the needle and smooth the hole, wipe away any gook. Repeat a few inches lower. Keep doing it until you've made 4-5 slices.
Then tell the child, would you like a sliced banana? And hand him a banana. And it is sliced on the INSIDE! Take a bow.
Bananas With Rum - Roberta Lovatelli
1 cup sugar
1/2 C fresh lemon juice
1 Tbs butter
2 Tbs white rum
6 medium sized underripe bananas (I use plantains)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a small saucepan, mix the sugar, lemon juice, butter and rum together and simmer for 10 minutes. Peel the bananas and slice them in half, lengthwise. Place them (cut side down), in a buttered baking dish. Pour the hot syrup over them. Bake for 30 minutes turning them once after the first 15 minutes. Let cool.
Frozen Sliced Bananas - Jim Biggerstaff
Frozen sliced bananas are a treat!
Black Currants - Ginger Johnson
Black currants (there are also red currants) grow on a low bush, not on a vine. If you've ever grown gooseberries the bush is about that size. The fruits are small, smaller than peas, and grow in clusters. They strike me as tasting a bit musty, although not at all unpleasant. They make very good jam or jelly if you have the patience for the latter (I don't).
Brandied Fruit - Sarah Scott
This all happened because I don't like regular fruit cake.
I've always thought the concept *sounds* good but I never like the results, so after much experimenting I make a fruitcake that is a cross between fruitcake, rum cake and pound cake, --thick heavy dark filled with chopped dried fruit and soaked in rum, then wrapped up and put in a cool cupboard for at least a month to "cure". I don't really have a recipe and it varies from year to year.
But, one thing I do is around Halloween I buy one of those packages of dried chopped fruit (raisins, apples, peaches, apricots, pears) and pour enough rum to cover it to soak until I am ready to bake the cake.
This year I never got to the cake and the rum soaked fruit stares at me whenever I open the pantry cupboard.
So I put a spoonful of it over ice cream. I am not an ice cream eater but it is delightful, sweet yet sharp, and each tidbit of fruit retaining just enough of it's own flavor to add variety.
Chardwardon (Spiced Pear Sauce)
1 lemon, room temperature
8 firm, ripe pears
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. ginger
1 cup water
1/8 tsp. salt
Squeeze lemon juice into a shallow bowl. Quarter the pears and remove skin and core. Put pears in juice to cover all surfaces. Boil water with salt. Drain the pears, and discard the lemon juice. Add pears to boiling water; stir in sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Simmer on low heat until pears are soft (about 12-15 minutes), stirring occasionally. Serve warm or cool. Excellent alone, or with hard cheese and dark bread. Wonderful if topped with Swithin Cream.
Cherries
Cherry Bounce - Sarah Scott
Mix together six pounds of ripe morellas and six pounds of black heart cherries. Put them in a wooden bowl or tub, and with a pestle or mallet mash them so as to crack all the stones. Mix with the cherries three pounds of loaf sugar, or of sugar candy broken up, and put them in a demijohn, or into a large stone jar. Pour on two gallons of the best double rectified whiskey. Stop the vessel closely, and let it stand for three months, shaking it every day during the first month. At the end of three months you may strain the liquor and bottle it off. It improves with age. -Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery, 1839
Cherry-Apricot Compote - Ruth Abrams
I made a cherry-apricot compote for this weekend. It required the use of a cherry pitter. I found that very exciting.
The recipe calls for 1 1/2 pounds each, cherries and apricots. You make a syrup out of 1 cup wine, 1 cup water, 1 1/4 cup sugar, and the grated zest of an orange, and poach the fruit in the syrup for five minutes, no more. We ate it on Friday with chocolate sorbet, on Saturday with almond cake and this morning, on our French toast.
Cherry Pitters
The Cherry Pitter Question - Alice Gomez
Ruth, what type of cherry pitter did you use?
Penzey's spice catalog mentions using the larger end of large paper clip. I haven't tried this nor do I have a "commercial" pitter, but am open to suggestions...
Answer One - Ruth Abrams
What kind of cherry pitter? It was an Italian device about the size of a pair of scissors. It works with a scissoring motion as well, you put the fruit in the round doughnut-shaped part and then plunge the curvy stick part through the fruit. It leaves the cherries with big holes in them, and isn't as easy to work as the fancier ones. But since I can't get cherries for most of the year and I mostly eat them raw, I am satisfied. It was oddly satisfying, in a Freudian sort of way.
Answer Two - Marian Van Til
You can buy small table-top pitters (about the same size as table-top apple peelers). When I made sour cherry jam a few years ago, and bought the cherries in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, the guy at the farm actually let me borrow their pitter (worked very neatly) -- with a $10 deposit. But still, I was very pleasantly surprised.
Check out Cherry Pitter, The Ezy Catalog
Answer Three - Karen von Bargen
Lehman's Nonelectric Catalogue (supposedly targeted at the Amish but not really as I believe they are on line) has a cherry pitter. You put the cherries in a hopper and turn the crank. The cherries are pitted and the pits fall in one pile while the now pitless cherries fall into another. It makes me think of an old fashioned machine gun, turning the crank and things flying around. The juice is an added special effect for my machine gun fantasy.
Dulce de Mimbre - Mary S.
This was served as a dessert [we enjoyed when living in Montevideo, Uruguay]: a largish slice of a mild, yellow cheese, and a corresponding slice of "dulce de mimbre" ... a conserve of quince, thick to the point of solidity, and just tart enough to set off the cheese, its grainy texture contrasting with the smoothness of the cheese. Yum!
Seems to me that we could get a similar treat in Costa Rica by buying "dulce de guayaba" (guava). But time passes, memory fades... eheu
The Virtues of Fondue - Marian Van Til
Chocolate fondue for dessert - with strawberries, peeled orange slices, grapes, banana pieces, any other fruit for dipping. With hot, dark espresso.
Frozen Grapes - Vanessa Brown
I have of late become positively addicted to frozen grapes.
One of my young charges served me some over the summer.
Take a bunch of grapes, pull 'em off the vine and wash 'em, drain well, then stick 'em in the freezer for a few hours at least... YUM!
I'm not a huge fan of regular old grapes, but frozen ones? I can't get enough.
Fruit Bars - Lois
About 2 1/2 (or a bit more) Cups of mixed dried fruit and nuts. (I use pecans, golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried apricots, cut to taste. But anything will do.)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup oats.
Mix everything together, press into buttered pan (small brownie pan size), bake at 325 for about half an hour. Cut into bars while warm.
If you want to make it shiny, you can glaze it with a mixture of 2 tablespoons of orange juice mixed with 1/4 cup of sugar, heated til the sugar melts, then brushed on top of the bars while warm. Or you could put a glob of apricot jelly into the microwave to melt a bit, and brush that on top. But it doesn't need a glaze.
Fruyte Fritours (Fruit Fritters)
4 large firm pears
4 large apples
2 eggs
2 tbsp. ale
1-1/2 tbsp. oil
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 lb. butter
4 tbsp. brown sugar
Pare fruit, core and cut into moon-shaped wedges that are firm, not flimsy. Beat eggs with the salt; add eggs and ale to the flour and stir until blended (should be the consistency of thick pancake batter). Coat each fruit slice with batter. Heat butter and oil in a skillet, and saute fruit until golden brown. Drain on a rack. While still warm, sprinkle each fritour with brown sugar and serve.
Baked Fruit Tart - Alice Gomez from (Flying Star Bakery Cafe) Use an 8-inch tart pan (with removable insert), an 8-inch springform pan (with removable bottom), or an 8- or 9-inch regular pie pan. Could probably use an 8-inch square cake pan, or even an 8- or 9-inch round cake pan.
(I used half the regular recipe, which is what follows. Double these amounts for an 11-inch tart pan, or a 10-inch springform pan.)
Flying Star Sweet Dough
4 ounces flour
2-1/2 ounces butter, softened
1-1/2 ounces powdered sugar
1 egg (original recipe also uses 1 egg, but I used 1 egg for half the recipe anyway and added 1/2 ounce more of flour, and 1/2 ounce more of powdered sugar)
pinch of salt
Mix butter, with powdered sugar, egg and salt. (I used a food processor.) Mix in flour. Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
Brown-Butter Batter
1 egg
1 ounce flour
3 ounces granulated sugar
2 ounces butter
1 pinch ginger powder* (if using sliced peaches)
vanilla extract, to taste
*Can use cinnamon, nutmeg if making with sliced apples, almond extract if using cherries, ginger with pears, apricots or plums
Brown butter in microwave or over very low heat until caramel-colored, then let cool completely. Takes about 5 minutes.
Mix eggs and sugar in mixer. Add flour, ginger powder, and vanilla, and mix until combined.
Mix in butter when cool, and refrigerate until needed.
To assemble tart:
Remove Sweet Dough from refrigerator
Prepare fruit - my notes say 1-1/2 apples, sliced very thinly; 5 sliced peaches or pears (pat dry with paper towels before using or the tart gets too soupy); 8 ounces blueberries; 2 cups cherries; 10 or 12 plums or apricots, pits removed, and cut into halves or quarters.
Line pan with Sweet Dough - you can either roll it out and fit it into the pan, or press it into the pan with fingers. For the final product, it won't matter.
Cover the Sweet Dough with Brown-Butter Batter, smoothing with a spoon.
Top with fruit of choice, and bake at 300 degree F. for 45-60 minutes, or until fruit is soft - time will vary depending on choice and thickness of fruit. Let cool completely.
To finish, melt a small amount of apple jelly (or other complementary clear jelly) and brush on fruit to give it a shiny glaze. Can also dust lightly with powdered sugar.
Dessert from West End Cafe in New York City - Lois
They mixed raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, maybe fresh, maybe frozen. Took their juices (cranberry juice would do, too) and heated it, thickened it with cornstarch I think. Once they had this base, they probably put the fruit in long enough to heat, but not long enough to "mush". Add a bit of brandy or something like that. Serve hot in a soup or salad bowl, with some vanilla ice cream on top. A kind of fruit soup. Was really good.
Plums
Jeffrey Charles Asks...
I've a single plum tree in my backyard. I'm collecting about five ripe plums a day. Anyone have any good recipes using plums?
Marion Burros' Famous Plum Torte, Of Course, From the New York Times - Lois
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
Pinch salt
2 eggs
12 plums, halved, pitted
Sugar to sprinkle
Cinnamon if you like it
Cream together the butter and sugar (you can soften the butter in the microwave on low, don't worry if it melts a little). Add the flour, salt and eggs; beat well. Spread the batter into a buttered 9-inch springform pan. The batter will be very stiff, but don't worry about that, it'll spread out more when it cooks.
Place the plum halves, skin-side up, on top of the batter. Lightly sprinkle plums with sugar and lemon juice; adjust the amount depending on the sweetness of the fruit. If you want, you can sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven 1 hour, or until done.
Plum Brandy - Ruth Abrams
(I haven't made it with plums, only cherries)(from Claudia Roden)
Wash and dry two pounds of fruit and prick each one with a needle in a few places. Put them in a jar, sprinkling each layer with lots of sugar (about 1 and 1/4 cups total.) Leave uncovered for a day. The following day, cover the fruit with brandy (if you want to eat it soon) or with vodka (if you want to make your own brandy.) Roden says to seal the jar hermetically, but I didn't have the equipment so I just stuck it in the fridge for a long time.
You can drink the brandy or just put it on ice cream (or soy'scream).
Polish Plum and Rhubarb Soup - Ruth Abrams
Here is a version from one of my more obscure cookbooks (author Debra Wasserman):
1 pound plums, pitted and chopped
1 pound rhubarb, chopped
10 cups water
sweetener of your choice (she calls for apple juice concentrate, but use sugar or honey or whatever you like)
1/4 teaspoon powdered cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
Boil all ingredients in a large pot. Lower heat, cover pot and simmer 30 minutes. Check for sweetener before serving--you will need more sweetener if you serve it cold. If you serve hot, be careful tasting because fruit soups get really hot!
There are other versions of this recipe, some with only plums. Or you could make plum compote, a dessert in which the plums are poached in a light syrup.
Plum Jam (Microwave) - Lois
If you're doing "refrigerator" jam, you can do it in the microwave.
Put your cut up plum stuff in a large glass measuring cup, put in an equal volume of sugar.
Microwave a total of 10 minutes on high, maybe in two or three shots, for a total cup or two.
You might have to experiment some, this depends on liquid and degrees of sweetness and quantity of jam and power of oven.
I've made good orange marmalade this way, after first "food processing"/ slicing some oranges, as well as strawberry jam. This method really preserves the taste of fresh fruit, and you can make small amounts, a cup or two, easily.
Microwave Cautions - Linnea
Be very careful of heated sugar (might explode like a pine tree!). Sugar becomes very hot, so after cooking, just leave it in microwave for about 2 minutes at least. I found out the hard way about boiling up a little jam or jelly at a time--it sure boils up and over!
I think Lois' method would give a wonderful fresh taste to the jam.
I've made jam and poured into hot jars and then just refrigerate them if I don't want to can them--I do believe in boiling up the jars because a friend's entire day's work spoiled as she didn't immerse the filled, sealed jars and boil them.
Lois Agrees
Right! The jam has to be done in 2 or 3 or more shots of a couple of minutes each, a brief rest in between. The jelly will be liquidy, but will gel as it cools.
Plum Duff
Barry Wainwright
Here's one from MaryAnn. It's one of the earlier ones, so dates from the 19th century:
Plain Plum Pudding
Of raisins, currants, flour, breadcrumbs, each one pound. Three-quarters pound suet, one pound treacle, half pint milk, half ounce ground Allspice, the rind of a lemon peeled thin and minced. Rub together the flour and breadcrumbs, the peel, spice, suet, and fruit. Mix the treacle with the milk, then the whole together with a wooden spoon. Butter over a large basin with a rim, and press the pudding firmly into it. Tie down and boil 4 hours.
Serve with melted butter sauce with a wine glass full of rum and a desert spoonful of moist sugar.
David Charnick Asks...
And the plums? Or does the 'plum' in plum pudding not mean plum?
Barry Replies
If you consider that a barrel of soft fruit would hardly last long enough to leave the English Channel (despite the state of putrefaction that was quite acceptable in barrels of beef or cheese that travelled twice or more across the Atlantic) before they dissolved in their own fermentation, it is only to be expected that the fruit in an ocean-going vessel of those days would have to be dried for storage.
Bruce Trinque Adds...
Which we only calls them plums.
As I understand it, the "plums" were in fact raisins and/or dried currants.
Jessie Strader and the OED
Nowadays it's raisins. But the ever all-knowing OED give some explanation of 'plum' in that context:
4. a. A dried grape or raisin as used in puddings, cakes, etc. See PLUM BROTH n., PLUM PIE n., PLUM PORRIDGE n., PLUM PUDDING n., etc. Now rare (chiefly hist.) exc. in established compounds.
Attested earliest in PLUM POTTAGE n. The name was probably retained after the replacement of dried plums or prunes by raisins in certain recipes.
and for PLUM POTTAGE:
= PLUM BROTH n.
Perh. originally containing prunes (see note at PLUM n. 4a).
1574 J. BARET Aluearie sig. P 555 Plumme potage, or potage made thicke with meate or crummes of bread. Puls, pultis. ...
and PLUM BROTH:
A thick soup made of beef, prunes, raisins, currants, white bread, spices, wine, sugar, and other ingredients, formerly a traditional Christmas dish.
Looks like the plums of plum pudding were always at best prunes.
Which I've noticed recently that various purveyors of fruit are suppresing the word 'prune' and labeling their product 'dried plums'. They must think they'll sell better without the stigma of 'prune'.
Still, prune juice is a warrior's drink!
Pomegranates
David Charnick Asks...
Does anyone know how to eat a pomegranate properly?!?
Susan Collicot
Miss Manners does.
I don't have her exact words in front of me, but it was something to the effect of:
- send any other household members out
- close and lock doors, draw blinds
- spread large tarp
- strip down and go for it as messily as possible.
Helen Connor
I saw Nigella on the telly - cut it in half, turn the half over, tap it with an implement until the bits fall out.
Ted Dannemiller
Pomegranates:
- Slice off both ends
- score the husk in quarters
- submerge the fruit and break apart in a bowl of water. The 'arils' (don't ask me why I remember that) sink (density), and the membranes float.
- discard the membrane
- drain
- ENJOY
Pragathi Katta
Pomegranates were a treat in my household growing up. My mother would cut them in half and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. We'd eat them as is, with gloriously dyed lips and fingers when I was little. She also used the seeds in some recipes, but I don't remember those well at all. I used to love them.
Jennifer Klein
If you google it there are all sorts of techniques, many involving holding the fruit under water so the juice doesn't go everywhere. We eat a lot of pomegranates in our house, and the best way to eat them that I have found is this:
Wear an apron or dark colored shirt.
With a knife make a slice across the top, then pull the fruit apart.
This will leave the seeds intact, thus reducing any squirting juices.
Brush the seeds out of the membrane.
I like to eat my pom seeds on a salad too, with a mild feta and sunflower seeds with oil and vinegar.
Lois
The problem with pomegrantes is that they are like that junk which rescued Jack and Stephen from that (help me here) island--they have innumerable compartments. And those have tough separative skins.
So just cutting the thing in half does not, read not, liberate all the seeds. Unless there are hemispheric varieties I haven't encountered. I'd call them a leisure fruit. If you've got a lot of time and patience, or like doing things like that with friends, unpacking them can be quite entertaining. But it requires some attention and care, more than most foods you need to prepare.
If you can get those danged seeds out intact, you can strew them on salads.
Or just give up, crush the thing, and drink the juice.
Definitely something to order in restaurants.
Strawberry Shortcake - Mary S.
Bake a very large, very short scone which splits into feathery layers, ladle fresh sliced, sweetened strawberries and juice (none of yer jam) over them, and top it all with good rich whipped cream.
And that is strawberry shortcake, the poetry of desserts. Eat it with a fork, and with rejoicing.
You can have tea with it if you want! (And don't ever let anyone sell you a miserable rubbery little chemical-yellow sponge cake with a hole in it, filled with fruit and some exploded soybeans, and call that "strawberry shortcake.")
Strawberry Cheesecake Blintzes - Alice Gomez
8 ounces mascarpone or cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup dairy sour cream
2 tablespoons orange liqueur or orange juice
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 cup glaze for strawberries, divided
10 ready-to-use crepes, at room temperature
2 1/2 to 3 cups sliced fresh strawberries or mixed fresh berries
Sour cream
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In food processor or blender, place the softened mascarpone or cream cheese with sour cream, liqueur, sugar and 1/2 cup of the glaze for strawberries. Cover and blend until smooth. For each blintz, spoon 2 heaping tablespoons of the cheese mixture onto center of one crepe, spreading into a small circle.
Fold crepe in half over filling, then fold left and right edges to center. Fold over once more to make a packet. Place blintzes folded side down on a buttered baking sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until blintzes are heated through and edges are light golden brown.
To serve, warm remaining 1/2 cup glaze on HIGH power of microwave for about 45 seconds or until heated through. Place two blintzes on each serving plate; spoon strawberries over. Drizzle with glaze, add a dollop of sour cream, and serve immediately.
Makes 5 servings.
Zapallo en Almíbar - Satyam
I don't know if it is known elsewhere, I haven't seen it anywhere else, but in Argentina we have something we call 'zapallo en almíbar' (pumpkin in syrup) which is pumpkin cut in cubes about one or two inches on the side and left overnight in a glass container (not metal) covered with water and a spoon full of calcium oxide (CaO) per kilogram of pumpkin. I am not sure if CaO is lime or it is Ca(OH)2 or some other calcium product, the one I mean is the one that burns, like in mystery novels, when the body gets consumed in lime so that not even the bones remained ... this might not be a good association to make if you are ever to try this dessert, sorry. Just a spoon of lime does not consume the cubes of pumpkin but it hardens the exterior. Next day you rinse it several times and boil it with as much sugar as pumpkin until the cubes get translucent. Cinnamon and other spices may be added to suit your taste. What the lime does is make a harder shell on the cubes so that the pumpkin does not turn into puree. It is also interesting to eat since when you chew on it the outer shell is crunchy but then the inner core just melts in your mouth.
I believe this technique of hardening the exterior with lime is not known or it is quite forgotten because I read in an airline magazine about a famous chef who invented 'mango caviar' and it seemed like they were talking of an unheard of invention. He prepares mango gelatin, puts it in a syringe and lets it fall, drop by drop, on a bowl with a solution of lime. The gelatin hardens with the lime, but only the exterior of each drop. The 'caviar' part comes from the feeling when you put it in your mouth and the little drops of gelatin pop open and spill the flavor inside.
I assume that you can get the same effect you get on pumpkin on other fruits. In pumpkin it does not affect the taste, just the texture. Lime and water is dangerous stuff, be always careful to handle with dry utensils and store it in a dry place.
Which it's the Patrick O'Brian list of the world!