This week, we all need a distraction. Too much bad stuff is too close to home for too many of us.
Food is a fine distraction and a bunch of people in my vicinity are talking about Jane Austen and about Bridgerton, sometimes in the same sentence but mostly in quite different conversations. I happen to have some well-tested recipes from events past. I actually have several cookbooks worth of recipes from Jane Austen’s family and from the south of England at precisely the right time, but the ones I’m giving here are tested and are delicious. They are, in fact, from a cookbook I wrote many, many years ago, when I was younger and more charming. They are in Australian English and I’m quite happy to translate if translation is needed. One dish is for summer and one for winter, for obvious reasons.
I hope these dishes improve your week.
Ice-cream
Ingredients:
Twelve ripe apricots
375 g icing sugar
600 ml cream
Method:
Pulp apricots. Blend with icing sugar and cream. Freeze it then mould it. Keep frozen until ready to serve.
Moonshine Pudding
Ingredients:
A loaf of thinly sliced bread
Butter
Currants
Glacé cherries
Candied pineapple
Other glacé fruit900 ml cream
6 egg yolks
½ nutmeg (grated)
Sugar
Method:
Layer the bottom of a baking dish with bread and butter. Add a layer of currants and candied fruit. Add another layer of butter, then more candied fruit. Continue until the dish is full.
Mix cream, egg yolks, nutmeg, and sugar. Pour the mixture on the pudding. Bake it in a moderate oven for three quarters of an hour.
And, if things get too bad, have this for breakfast and then go back to sleep:
Windsor Syllabub
Ingredients:
1 bottle of sweet sherry (750 ml)
6 dessert spoons sugar (or thereabouts)
1 ½ teaspoons nutmeg
1 teaspoon of cloves
Whisk
Add 1.200 l milk and 300 ml cream (thick, but not thickened).
Mix well and serve.