It’s at this time of the year that I mourn the gradual disappearance of my favourite summer fruits – rosy cherries, cherubic peaches, apricots and their ilk which dwindle from the fruit shops. In their place however is one of those truly seasonal fruits, the quince. Unlike fruits like berries that are supposedly seasonal yet appear all year round in various watery and tasteless guises, quinces are available only from around about mid March to June. They are plentiful and very cheap at the moment.

So it’s time to grab a bagful and pot roast them a la Maggie Beer, to later serve with ice cream or baked between a blanket of fragrant frangipane, pickle them to serve with potted meat or transform them into a slab of dark quince paste. The task of making quince paste is something I seldom look forward to; the rigorous stirring of a spitting and heaving pot of quince is about as painful an experience as keeping a vigilant eye on a batch of angry rhubarb jam. The end product however, keeps forever and is glorious with a wedge of Manchego cheese, a classic pairing.

While trying to decide what to do with the quinces, they can also look equally lovely piled in a bowl, on the kitchen counter. I love the look of this knobbly fruit with their gorgeous burnished yellow skins and that wonderfully mysterious scent that permeates the whole room. The Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite considered the quince a sacred fruit and in ancient times, they were featured in wedding ceremonies as a symbol of happiness and fertility. The most amazing thing for me about this fruit is that the flesh of quinces are, in their raw form, they are astringent, colourless and practically inedible. When cooked however, the application of heat and acidity over time, transforms them into amazing perfumed, ruby coloured fruit. Kitchen alchemy, at it’s very best.

A week after purchasing my quinces, I have finally consigned them to a pot of candying liquid, to be eventually turned into an attempt at Tartine’s recipe for Panforte with candied quince. Will keep you posted!

This is my entry for that fantastic Weekend Herb Blogging event which Pat of Up a Creek without a Patl is hosting this week.

This coming 16th of May 2007 is LIVESTRONG Day, an initiative by the Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise awareness in the community about cancer survivorship. I can’t think of anyone whose life has not been touched by cancer in some way. [Edit: After I wrote this, I received an email from a friend letting me know that she’ll be flying over to New Zealand to see an aunt who has terminal cancer]. It is important to remember those who lost their battle against it and to celebrate those who are still fighting it or have successfully fought it.

As part of LIVESTRONG Day, Barbara of Winos and Foodies is hosting an event called A Taste of Yellow. In support of this event, I have baked a batch of bright yellow lemon sour cream cakes. Lemons are usually the first thing that come to mind when I think about yellow foods. I love them because the juice and their zest add a certain tangy freshness to desserts and work wonders in savoury foods by cutting the richness and giving a dish balance. For me, they are a must-have accompaniment to freshly shucked oysters, poppyseed cake, hot-from-the-pan crepes, and fish ‘n’ chips.

These cakes, from a recipe by Julie Le Clerc, are forkfuls of moist, lemony goodness, made even more special by the topping of lemon sugar.

Lemon sour cream cakes with lemon sugar :

125g butter
3/4 cup sugar
finely grated zest of one lemon
3 eggs
1/2 tsp lemon essence
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 160’C. Grease and flour a 12-hole muffin tin.

Cream butter and sugar until pale. Beat in zest, eggs, lemon essence (if you have it) and sour cream.

Fold in sifted dry ingredients. Pour into prepared tins and bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Allow to cool before removing from cake tins. Spoon a little lemon sugar over each and this will soak in and set to form a crunchy crust.

Lemon sugar :

juice of 3 lemons
1/2 cup caster sugar

Mix juice and sugar together and drizzle over cakes as soon as they are removed from the oven.

He hauled my sleepy ass out of bed today, to drive me all the way to Burwood so that I could finally buy myself a cleaver. Pathetically grateful after a successful shopping trip I had grumbled all the way to, I later bought him a pork bun and a ham/shallot bun from a nearby bakery. They do say a way to a man’s heart is via his stomach!

Filed alongside ‘wok’ and ‘ice-cream machine’, a cleaver is something I’ve always wanted to get. Ever since I put a dent in my Global knife, trying to open a deceptively simple looking coconut, many months ago. It’s not really something I envisage myself using on a daily basis but I can see it coming in handy every now and again. I mean, have you seen the fine and intricate work Chen Kenichi can do with a bear-claw of a cleaver on Iron Chef?

Leung Tim Choppers in Burwood is just the place to visit if you want to buy a chopper. They have a whole wall spanning the length of the shop, devoted to all kinds of cleavers (as well as smaller display cases for Japanese and German branded knives). Forged from different steels into different lengths and widths, they have cleavers for just about any job, including cutting grass! Also, the wonderful lady behind the counter is incredibly nice and friendly. She passes on a few little handy tips about the knives we’ve just bought. The two knives I pick, are an every day household cleaver (not too big, not too heavy, and very very sharp) and a ‘watermelon’ cleaver – one that is long enough to deal with large, unwieldy melons, or in my case, large baked tarts and slices. At first glance it looks too ridiculously big, but we found it immensely useful in the previous kitchen I worked in, and the knife belonged to A, so I thought it was about time I bought one for myself.

Aside from knives, they also have a wide range of restaurant grade utensils. From chopping boards the size of tree trunks and steamer baskets so big you could sleep in them, to nicknacks like an onion slicer and corn cutter. There’s a whisk in the display window that’s just about my height and a big metal cooking vessel sits outside the entrance to the shop. I’m not sure what it’s for, but it looks like a windowless spaceshuttle.

The watermelon cleaver will come in handy this week. I have been instructed to make some gluten-free chocolate brownies for a special event. At first I was sceptical. Is it even possible for chocolate brownies to be gluten-free? Don’t they need that tiny bit of flour in them to hold everything together? Then I stumbled across a recipe by Karina over at Gluten-free Goddess that was written up so enthusiastically that I just had to give it a go. And the results are : stunning. It’s quite close to my favourite (non gluten-free) brownie recipe which also uses brown sugar for that extra depth in flavour and wonderfully moist texture.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can find the recipe here. The only slight change I made was to use gluten-free plain flour (readily available at supermarkets) instead of the specified brown rice flour (which I thought might be harder to find). And check out Myriam’s BrownieBabe event for more Brownie goodness – gluten-free or otherwise!

Leung Tim Choppers Co.
198-200 Burwood Road
Burwood 2134.