Saturday 25 August 2012

Day 106: Spiced plums in red wine


[This post is for Friday, 24 August 2012]

Well, it’s not every day that a normal person like me gets a call from a celebrity chef but I had the pleasure in talking to the Lady Herself, Rachel Allen, today. She phoned me to chat about the pannacotta which I had the disaster experience with. I kind of knew that the gelatine was the problem but thankfully Rachel was able to give me some tips on how to work with it better so I’m going to give it a go again as I’m very keen to see if it works out better this time. As we chatted through the recipe and Rachel sped-read from the book, she also discovered that there’s actually a misprint in the book as the recipe should read to add the gelatine to the creamy cardamom mixture and not the coconut milk so that’s at least one way where I went wrong also. I must say though, having spoken to Rachel on the phone, she is exactly like she is on TV – so bubbly and polite. So, I’m definitely going to try the recipe again – probably within the next week so, for now, it’s onto another new one…

I began by halving and de-stoning plumbs. I then put them into a saucepan with red wine, the juice of an orange, caster sugar, cloves and a cinnamon stick. I heated the lot for about 10 minutes until the plums were softened and then removed the cinnamon stick and cloves. I served them in separate bowls with vanilla ice-cream.

The verdict…

Well, it was over to Dear Mother-in-Law and Dear Father-in-Law for the verdicts this time. I knew Dear Husband wouldn’t be interested in plums but knew of two individual who would definitely appreciate it. The marks came back as 10 out of 10 as they absolutely loved the plums. I’m sure they really did like them but I can’t help but wonder at times if it’s people just being polite whereas Dear Husband will always tell me what he thinks – no matter how good or how bad my cooking turns out.

Overall, an extremely easy and quick recipe to make. I loved the aroma wafting through the kitchen as it reminded me of Christmas so, like some of the other recipes, this one has made The List for wintery Sunday evenings. And I’m not even going to tell you how many days it is until Christmas as someone reminded me yesterday…

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