Results tagged “pears”

This recipe is just a guide.  You could use water or dry white wine and more sugar or honey instead of the dessert wine.  And the flavourings are optional and really up to you.  Go easy on them as their flavour will intensify when you reduce the syrup.  Instead of pears, you could use quinces.

Well, that was quick.  We've spent the last three days speeding south through France, trying to catch up some of the time we lost hanging about in the rain in England.  What with France actually being quite large, this has meant spending most of our days in the car, only coming out at night to appreciate our surroundings.

But France being France, that hasn't meant any shortage of interesting culinary activity.  High-quality local specialities have crowded in on us at every turn, and we've learnt all about Norman cider and Pineau des Charentes - with the result that our new fancy car-mounted fridge is now full of both of them.  We've also stocked up on essential preserved food (i.e. confit de canard) for the rocky road ahead - let's see how well that survives the Sahara.

The first thing we noticed as we came out of the Channel Tunnel into France was that it wasn't raining - after a month in England in August that seemed somehow wrong.  The second thing was that it's a long way from Calais to Normandy, but we headed that way anyway so that we could stay at Marie and Pascal Brunet's fruit farm, La Prémoudière, where we arrived extra-late just so that we could wake everyone up by setting off our car alarm ...

I'm afraid that what with all the Christmas duties that come with being a culinary student (even more cooking, eating and drinking than usual) I have been slack and not typed up this week's recipe properly, so there is no pdf version this time.  Feeling guilty about a) all the butter and cream in past recipes, and b) the lack of Christmas recipes, this week's offering is a Christmassy salad that might work well as your starter on Monday.  It looks really pretty and has a fresh, zingy taste.  We made it at school last week and everyone liked it.

We're off to Tahoe now for a snowy Christmas.  (Everyone's waiting for me in the car so I'd better go...) Hope you have a good one.